Scotland-based This-tel, is poised to enter the Indian healthcare market, with its digital pen to transform healthcare. The pen allows written information to be scanned and transmitted to a central server. The company will collaborate with Indian-based IT firm Crane Global Solutions to distribute its products in India. M Neelam Kachhap chats with Steve Forsyth, Founder CEO, This-tel to know more about the innovative technology
How does This-tel digital pen work?
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Steve Forsyth
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The pen works and feels like a traditional pen, but captures everything you write as digital data in real time, with built-in Bluetooth and USB capabilities keep you connected, requiring minimal to no additional training or changes to your business processes required.
- Write on any surface: With the natural feel of a regular pen you can write on any surface that has the proprietary microdot pattern. This unique pattern works with the pen’s built-in camera to determine precise positioning on any surface, ensuring fast and accurate data capture. From whiteboards and paper sheets, to tablets and displays, or even a variety of mobile devices, the pen tips are suited to fit the desired surface, allowing you to always write digitally.
- Precision positioning: The digital pens provide exact positioning on any microdot patterned surface, be it paper forms, whiteboards or glass displays. Additionally, pressure and absolute time for each position are all recorded. When this signature information is combined with our world-class handwriting recognition capabilities, the resulting editable text far exceeds any other OCR solution.
- Transfer in real time, anywhere: Captured data can be sent in real time via Bluetooth to different devices, such as computers, servers and mobile phones, or synchronised via USB on a computer with data delivery to e-recipients and decision makers in seconds.
- Reliable and durable: With more than 10 years of experience providing easy-to-use, intuitive, reliable and durable digital pens for an array of purposes and environments, This-tel is the one to trust.
What are the hardware and software requirements for using This-tel digital pens?
The system is a B2B software as a service (SaaS) solution and can be installed on the clients servers or they can use our hosted service, at the user end all that is needed is an internet ready hosted device (Mobile, tablet or PC) that the pen can connect to via it USB cradle or Bluetooth.
How does this technology help healthcare professionals?
Innovation in data capturing by a doctor, nurse, ANM etc. by providing the flexibility to continue using paper-based forms while still enabling electronic data capture in a form which allows data mining. Imagine if everything you wrote with pen and paper was captured and saved digitally.
For healthcare professionals the benefits are obvious:
- There is very little training needed – after all, it’s pen and paper
- The time saving due to no manual data input means lower costs and more time available to spend with patients
- Pen and paper are lightweight, easy to carry, and always ready to use
- Because you are not stuck behind a computer, you can enjoy a more natural patient interaction.
Our technology simplifies life by:
- Converting text or forms filled out by hand into digital data within seconds
- Downloaded directly to your database for instant, accurate records without having to manually input them
- You still have the paper copy so you have duplicate records – all with the same effort
Doctors: There is no need for training or to change habits or behaviors – just keep using pen & paper as you do now, and everything you write is instantly electronically recorded.
Healthcare managers: It improves overall efficiency of your facilities, saves money, and frees staff to help ensure that more patients can benefit from the highest standards of care.
Nurses: It lets you electronically record everything in one step instead of two, requires no training and frees up more time for you to work with patients
Mobile care workers: Digital pen and paper gives you better mobility, improves your connection with patients and saves you a lot of time.
What are the advantages of using your product?
- Decreases consultation and administrative time for both new and existing patients. That implies that staff and clinicians have the capacity to accommodate and see an additional patients.
- Presents the most cost-effective strategy to prevent, and early diagnosis and treatment of diseases
- Integrates healthcare at all levels and also private practitioners and major providers of healthcare
- Gives more control over concerns regarding ethics, medical negligence, commercialisation of medicine, and incompetence
- Reduces the cost of medical care and thereby reduces the threat to healthy doctor relationship
- Increasing speed and efficiency of data capture and easily digitise information
- Being simple to implement at clinical sites and cost effective for sponsors
- As data can be converted different formats and sent over net in encrypted form, performing data analytics is just clicks away and also maintaining confidentiality
- Reduces the time to a huge extent.
- Have both the hard copy and electronic version of that hard copy close to instantly
- Maintenance of data integrity and accuracy
- Track not only how many calls they respond to but what exactly occurs during the transportation to the hospital process
- Also enables staff to :
- Be more in control of the administrative time
- Less stressed
- Have more personable approach in their work with the patient
Tell us about the pilot run at the cancer hospital at Hyderabad.
It is a comprehensive tertiary cancer centre, serving not only the state of Andhra Pradesh and also to the neighbouring states. It provides free treatment to approximately 10,000 new patients and 50,000 follow-up patients every year.
The pilot run included:
- Using Digital Writing Solution, it seamlessly mapped both old and new patient records by unique patient identification number. On fly submission, using digital pen of claims data for patients enrolled in both government and non-government healthcare schemes.
- The various aspects of computerisation of total work right from registration of the patient into hospital to claim submission. The solution will also look into aspects of computerisation of all services i.e. OP counter, IP counter, casualty, labs, radiology and billing (as mentioned in the scope).
- Track material right from their procurement to dispensing to the patient based on his/her healthcare schemes. Track medical equipment utilisation for both material and resource.
- On fly generation of MIS reports, both pictorial and tabular form to be submitted to government health department.
When did this pen come into the market? How many hospitals currently use this product?
The pen came into the market in 2001 and is presently used in hospitals in Europe, US South America and Asia.
Where can an Indian doctor buy this product and how much does it cost?
The product is sold as a B2B product to government’s national health authorities and private hospitals world wide but for India it is sold through our strategic partner Crane Global Solutions in Hyderabad.
What is your expectation from the Indian market for this product?
Our expectations is to roll it out to every government and private health facility in India.
How will this technology evolve in future?
The future is already here as we have future proofed the solution and you can now complete handwritten forms on mobiles, tablets, PCs. So our user can now fill in forms on paper or digitally from wherever they find themselves, so whether it’s a hospital facility or a remote rural locations we can transfer the data directly to databases and decision makers in seconds.