zhhealthcare wrote on Wednesday, June 16, 2010:
Hi
One of my clients wanted an option to let the patient sign the legal forms directly into the openEMR. HE was planning to use the iPad as a clipboard that can be handed when the client comes in and let them read and sign the form. I was wondering if any of you have any ideas as to how this can be done.
Thanks
Sam
sunsetsystems wrote on Thursday, June 17, 2010:
I’ve been asked to look into this. The interesting and more general problem is how to do freehand drawing on the browser side, especially since there are also clinical applications for that. Another important component of the problem is how to save the resulting image for later display or printing and perhaps editing.
Java and Flash are out because the iPad does not support those. We’d of course like to stick with open source. There are some open source JavaScript libraries that support SVG or Canvas objects which I’ll be looking at. In the meantime if anyone else has experience in this area, please pipe up!
saikensf wrote on Friday, June 18, 2010:
i have an apple dev license and was planning to develop a light ( clinical only, no billing ) client interface. that would include, among other things, the ability to enter signatures with an ipad stylus.
Also tablets using wirless to access a remote host still work when the local power goes out.
sunsetsystems wrote on Friday, June 18, 2010:
The iPad has a web browser, right? What else would need to be developed for it?
zhhealthcare wrote on Saturday, June 19, 2010:
iPad uses a stripped down version of Safari.
We could develop apps to work with the ipad using apple’s SDK. but then that is an entirely different development and app.
Here is another demo page from another company http://toucanmultimedia.com/webpen/webpen-demo.php . They also have an opensource free download in http://toucanmultimedia.com/download.php. I am going to test it on an iPad tomorrow to see if this works with it. They charge 265 for per domain license. My worry with this, per their installation document is that it stores the images in a directory as opposed to within a DB.(http://toucanmultimedia.com/webpen/Installation.doc). Would that be a security issue?
Sam
saikensf wrote on Saturday, June 19, 2010:
It honestly never occurred to me that you could collect a freehand signature without a quartz or opengl view. Neat.
I was basing the idea of an executable for the tablet both on that flawed assumption and modeling it after Nex Gen. The one clinician I’ve met in the last few weeks who was a gung ho advocate of EMR was a nex gen user who had a tablet/stylus allowing her to carry her record set from room to room and interact with taps of her “pen”. She likes it so much she takes her tablet from her day job with her when volunteering at ACS and uses it there too. Everyone else has ranged from “Ok I’ll humor you” to “I’m not going to use a computer for this and you can’t make me” which is several distinct kinds of disheartening.
Now if you do put it on an app instead of safari you can take advantage of the many very appealing natural interface elements provided by apple to make it more like the clip boards they are used to. flipping pages etc. From a timeline point of view we’re talking about doing this after meaningful use and certification.
-Simone