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ANOTO CASE STORY
Digital Pen and Paper to the rescue
“Digital pen and paper made a the fire department’s dispatcher services that
FACTS responds to approximately 6,000 – 7,000 calls
lot of sense for us. It was fore-
Customer: Solano County Public Health a year. Solano County needed a data collec-
most accurate, quick in providing tion tool that would be 95% – 100% accurate,
is part of Solano County’s Health and Social
Services Department, US. Solano County
us with the patient information especially since the paramedics transport
Public Health’s mission is to improve health we needed, portable and easy to such a large volume of patients.
and quality of life for people in the county. use.” Prior to the implementation of Digital Pen
and Paper technology, paramedics would fill
Challenge: To reduce the time that the Michael Frenn, the EMS agency administrator out a patient care form and provide a paper
county’s 160 plus paramedics, private Emer- for Solano County copy to the hospital, and to Solano County’s
gency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and fire Emergency Medical Services (EMS) station
fighters spend on the routine administra- Michael Frenn is the Emergency Medical Ser- respectively. A clerk at the EMS station would
tion associated with document creation, vices (EMS) agency administrator for Solano take that paper form and manually enter the
processing of patient care forms, and County and also the president-elect of the patient data into the station’s patient records
manual data entry. Additionally, there was Emergency Medical Services Administrators database.
a significant need to improve data accuracy Associations of California. He was tasked with “There were significant delays from the
and meet the compliance standards set by the goal of reducing the time that Solano time when a paramedic would document a
the county’s compliance and data integrity County’s 160 plus paramedics, private Emer- patient’s condition to the time when the pa-
group. gency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and fire tient data would be entered into our data-
fighters spent on the routine administration base. Additionally, we found that there were
Solution: A customized digital pen and associated with document creation, proces- numerous discrepancies in the data accuracy,
paper solution provided by IS2BE, based sing of patient care forms, and manual data which was partly because a non medical per-
on Anoto technology. entry. Additionally, data accuracy in the patient son would be trying interpret the information
records needed to be significantly improved. on the form and partly just due to human
Benefits: Significant time savings, almost Medic Ambulance is by far Solano County’s error while manually entering the data”, said
100% data accuracy. The time from when largest paramedic service provider with the Michael Frenn.
a call occurs, to when the data is trans- greatest number of patient transports for
mitted electronically has been significantly the county, operating some 12 – 16 units and Price the key factor
reduced. There is now an ability to meet responding to about 24,000 calls a year. The The EMS station chose Anoto Digital Pen
the needs of the county’s compliance and next largest volume of calls the Solano County and Paper technology for creating electronic
data integrity group. community service team responds to is from patient records for the approximately 30,000
Europe US Japan
Anoto Group AB Anoto Incorporated Anoto-Maxell K.K.
Phone: +46 46-540 12 00 Phone: +1-508 983 9550 Phone: +81 (0)3-5774 1212
ANOTO CASE STORY
calls that occur annually. “The digital pen is extremely good at repli- Partner profile:
At first, a solution with tablet PC:s was cating what a paramedic writes as a narrative IS2BE was founded in 2001 by the founders
also considered, but the digital pen and paper on a patient and can store it as part of the of Zoxbox, Inc. (a device vendor & system
solution was found to be more affordable. electronic record which can be referred to integrator) & NgnCom, Inc. (a network &
Price was the key factor involved in choosing later. This information is not included as part system integrator), and incorporated in
the digital pen and paper solution. of our statistical data nor interpreted as such”, Nevada, USA in April 2004. The company
The digital pen and paper system was confi- said Michael Frenn. is headquartered in San Jose, California. The
gured by Anoto’s partner IS2BE and custo- seasoned management team from Vodafone
mized to be integrated with the electronic Meeting compliance standards AirTouch, Verizon Wireless, Bank of America,
patient records database used at the EMS Data integrity and accuracy has always been TIAA-CREF and LifeScan successfully made
station. emphasized at Solano County, and periodic IS2BE the leader in the global digital data
“Digital pen and paper made a lot of sense audits are conducted on pen and paper ef- market. The company provides Intelligent
for us. It was foremost accurate, quick in ficiency. To verify data, the county’s compliance Pen Solutions™ primarily for the unique
providing us with the patient information and data integrity group cross references ran- worldwide business and professional form
we needed, portable and easy to use”, said dom records with the actual health assess- automation market segment. IS2BE success-
Michael Frenn. ments that the paramedics make on-site. fully conducted a first-in-the-market friendly
“I liked how Digital Pen and Paper techno- user trial in Silicon Valley, California in Q4
The solution logy allowed us to quickly create an electronic 2003.
The solution consists of a digital pen and a pa- record that could easily be e-mailed to our
tient care form with Anoto’s dot pattern. The compliance and data integrity group. It saved www.is2be.com
paramedics fill out the patient care form with us time”, said Michael Frenn.
the digital pen at the emergency location and Customer profile:
during the ambulance ride to the hospital. The Vision for the future Solano County Health and Social Services
pen looks and feels like any standard ink pen, The EMS station has concluded that IS2BE:s Department was created by the Board
but contains a tiny infrared camera and pro- solution based on Anoto technology provides of Supervisors in 1992. The Department
cessor which enables it to “read” and digitise an attractive solution for all emergency ser- employs over 1,262 employees working in
words as they are written on the patient care vice organizations that have to struggle with offices throughout Solano County, US, and
forms. balancing service delivery and technology is organized by seven program service areas.
When the paramedics return to the EMS supporting these initiatives with resource con- Public Health Services was founded in 1872
station, they dock the digital pen to a USB strained budgets. and became part of Solano County’s Health
port on the computer. The patient data is then Whereas the EMS station in Solano County and Social Services Department in 1991. The
uploaded to the patient records database in a now can have a digital version of the patient mission of Solano County Public Health is
matter of seconds. data nearly instantly, the hospitals still only re- to improve the health and quality of life for
“Now, the timeframe from when a call ceive a paper version. In the future, Michael people in our community. The organization
occurs to the time when the data is transmitted Frenn would like to see an integrated solution, promotes health and safety, and prevents
electronically is significantly shorter”, said enabling electronic records to be instantly cre- disease, injury, and premature death through
Michael Frenn. ated at the hospitals as well. He visions hav- individual and population-based services.
ing a completely autonomous patient care
Performing statistical analysis environment, where the emergency, fire and
The patient care form includes various types ambulatory systems are seamlessly integrated
of fields, such as check boxes, free text and with their hospitals’ electronic health record
boxed fields. Examples of data registered on systems.
the form: a yes/no answer to whether the
patient was unconscious or not, if he/she
experienced chest pains and details of what
occurred during the ambulance ride. The sta-
tion performs statistical analysis on the data,
to evaluate how well they are servicing their
community.
Some non digital data is also documented
on the patient care form. This information
tends to be notations describing additional
details about the incident.
Anoto Group AB is the company behind and world leading in the unique technology for digital pen and paper, which enables fast and reli- Published in November 2008
able transmission of handwritten text into a digital format. Anoto operates through a global partner network that focuses on user-friendly forms
solutions for efficient capture, transmission and storage of data within different business segments, e.g. healthcare, bank and finance, transport For more information:
and logistics and education. The Anoto Group has around 110 employees, offices in Lund (head office), Boston and Tokyo. www.anoto.com
