Medical Software

Those of us who are over 40 can remember when all medical records were either hand written by the physician (which always meant they were illegible) or typed by a transcriptionist. Medical records management has come a long, long way since then! No longer do medical notes have to be typed on special sticky backed paper, cut and pasted into patient charts - now there are many different types of medical chart software.

An innovation that is slow to catch on in the field of medical transcription is voice recognition software. This can be a terrific tool - if the person doing the dictating does not have a mouth full of food, a heavy accent, a tendency to mumble or to slur words together. If, however, the person dictating patient chart notes is less than a crisp speaker of English, the voice recognition medical chart software will be an expensive flop as the result will be what is called a word salad. If the software does not recognize words or comes up with a substitute, the chart will not be accurate.

So what should you look for in medical chart software? Every doctor has their own preferences in chart note formats, so your medical chart software should be flexible enough to use more than one style of chart note, or to adapt a format to suit.

Medical chart software (also known as electronic medical records software) should also have multi-access capability - in other words, the patient's chart can be accessed by more than one health care professional. It is also important to be able to cross check patient prescriptions, to avoid duplications or adverse drug interactions.

Reporting capabilities are another important feature that your medical chart software should have. The software should be able to generate more than one type of report, such as patient data, prescription tracking and appointment history.

Probably the most important feature in medical chart software is security; this ties right in to HIPAA compliance, as rule number one is patient privacy. You do most definitely not want any unauthorized person gaining access to your patient database, wherein all chart notes are contained, as well as a wealth of other, highly personal and confidential, information.

Security is addressed in medical chart software by the use of SSL technology. This stands for Secure Socket Layer and means that the communication of electronic medical records is protected from hackers or other cyber villains by complex codes that are virtually unbreakable.