The records are stored in a database on the computer.
Usually, once a day, the computer is connected to a printer
and the records are printed out to be stored into the
patient’s chart. They can also be reviewed from within the
computer itself.
The program includes a list of the referring physicians
in your community. Once the record in completed, the
physician has the option to mark the record in such a way
that a copy will automatically be sent to the referring
physician once the records are printed. The ENT Medical
Dictator will also generate a cover letter as well on a
psuedo letter head (printed on plain white paper). You
also have the option of printing out the referral letters on
custom printed stationary.
There are several good alternatives available at this
time. Our current recommendation would be for a Tablet
PC, which are made by several manufacturers including
HP/Compaq. Fujitsu also makes several computers that
are pen enabled.
Over the last several years, the cost difference between
a pen enabled computer and a regular lap top computer has
shrunk considerably. Currently, the difference is only
a few hundred dollars.
The advantage of the pen enabled computer is its small size
and pen input option. Instead of using a mouse or a
trackball/glidepad, the pen computer uses a pen to interact with
the screen. This is a very natural interface and is very
efficient. When you are trying to enter history information
as fast as the patient is talking, using a mouse is awkward
and you will probably have difficulty keeping up with the
patient. The other advantage of the pen interface is that it
is more natural for a doctor to be taking notes on a tablet
while talking to the patient rather than trying to type into
a keyboard while talking to a patient.
Generally fairly well. I have been using this program in
my practice for 6 years now and I often get questions about
what I am doing with that device in my lap. If I have time,
I will spend two or three minutes and briefly show them how
it works. If I am running behind, I will just stay it is a
computer to help me collect the information. Generally, the
patients seem to be impressed that the doctor is high tech
and seems to have the latest technology. After some
experience using the system, it is possible for the doctor
to still maintain a fairly high degree of eye contact with
the patient while using the system. It is important that the
main interaction be between the physician and the patient
and not between the physician and the computer.
We at Stone Enterprises realize that this is a major
expenditure and we would like to make sure that our
potential customers have a very good idea of what they are
buying before committing to the purchase. For this reason,
we probide a free a trial version of the program that is designed to
run on a regular desktop or laptop Windows computer. When
using the trial version of the program, you use a mouse to
click on buttons instead of a pen. The trial program is a fully functional
version of the real program with one important exception.
The trial version of the software is limited to saving a
maximum of 10 patients to the hard disk. When you try
to save the 11th patient to the disk, the program will ask
you if you wish to erase the first 10 patients. If you
would prefer a trial version of the program that has a time
limit rather than a patient limit, please contact us. It is
our goal at Stone Enterprises Medical Software for every
customer to know exactly what he or she is getting before
the purchase.
I am a practicing otolaryngologist with a life long
interest in computers. When I first started private practice
20 years ago, the IBM PC was first being introduced and I
purchased one for my practice. I could see that the computer
offered several advantages and efficiencies over the older
manual methods. Initially, I used Word Perfect and wrote
macros to assist in the development of the medical records.
In appx. 1990, two new technologies came on the scene: Pen
Computers and Microsoft Visual Basic. Pen Computers came on
with a great deal of expectation as the "next great thing".
They seemed ideal for collecting medical records. I began to
write the program in 1990 and began using the program with
my first pen computer in 1991. After a couple of years of
using the program internally, I decided that I should start
marketing the software and Stone Enterprises Medical
Software, Inc. was created. I have been selling the program
for the last 10 years and have shown the program at the
Academy meeting regularly. Currently, there are 75 ENT practices that have purchased the software.
Absolutely! The current program has about twice as many
features and the original program first introduced at the
Academy meeting in San Diego in 1994. It is also much more
customizable than the original version. With each new
physician using the program, I receive input on how to
improve the program and many of these suggestions make their
way into the program.
A lot of the current program enhancement are directed
toward providing more integration between ENT Medical
Dictator and billing software. We have already
provided some integration between GE Centricity and our
product and we a looking for more opportunities for
integration.
No. The ENT Medical Dictator always has been exclusively
for ENT doctors and we have no plans to change that in the
foreseeable future. I am a practicing otolaryngologist and
my philosophy behind this program is to make the best
possible program that will fit the specific needs of ENT
doctors. My main complaint about other medical record
software that I have seen is that they are not specific for
ENT practices. Some of the other packages have some nice
features but by the time you customize it for your practice,
you have spent a tremendous amount of time and effort. The
ENT Medical Dictator is designed to have so much specific
ENT information built into the program that the doctor can
pick up a unit and become productive with it in a very short
period of time.
Appx. 90-95% of what needs to be said will be somewhere
in the program in one module or another. There are several
options of how to get the last 5-10% of the information into
the program. If there are only a few words to add or change,
the pen computer has a built in "on screen" virtual keyboard
and the doctor can tap out those few words on the keyboard
while he has the tablet in his lap. If the doctor wants to
add several sentences to a record, he could wait until later
when the pen computer is back in the docking cradle and
attached to a regular keyboard and then go ahead and type
the information to be added. There is no reason why the
doctor couldn’t also dictate that "extra paragraph" and have
one of the office staff type in just that paragraph. If this
setup is used, the total amount of typing done by the office
staff should be reduced by at least 90% over the amount
needed if every word were being dictated.
In, theory – yes. In, practice the accuracy of the
handwriting recognition is so poor that almost anyone can
"hunt and peck" type on the virtual keyboard much faster and
more accurately than using handwriting recognition.
There is more progress being made in this field than in
handwriting recognition. The software out this year for
speech recognition is both more accurate and less expensive
than what was available previously. It is now possible to get
about 80-90 words per minute with speech recognition but by
the time you go back and correct all of the mistakes that
the speech recognition software made, your actual speed is
more like 20 words a minute. I feel that if you are a
non-typist, using speech recognition software is a
reasonable option. If you can type faster than 35 words per
minute, I feel that you are better off with typing. All of
the major speech recognition software packages allow you to
dictate into any Windows application, so there is no reason
you can not use them with the ENT Medical Dictator.
