Data capture software has been with us for many years now, and anyone who has ever used it can attest to its helpfulness in garnering necessary information in the shortest possible time with the least effort.
Data capture is defined as the process of “collecting structured and unstructured information electronically and converting it into data readable by a computer.” The process is not terribly complicated: information must be read and relayed in a computer-digestible format.
Data is created all the time: even when we type something, our computers are creating little pockets of data about the content we have made, the time it was typed out, our location, and the resources we are using.
The data that we capture and then feed into computers comes to us in many formats: handwritten, typed, and PDF.
These formats are not always ones that a computer can recognize (physical format) in terms of sorting out and categorizing the data into a more extensive collection (digital format); this is where data capture software comes in.
For a very long time, data capturers were human beings, sitting behind their keyboards and reading furiously through reams and reams of information to type it into a computer and categorize it themselves.
Data capture software currently uses robotic process automation and optical character recognition to read the physical data like a human would and then digitize it so that other programs can understand it too. The most significant benefits of automatic data capture are
- A marked increase in employee satisfaction. After all, data capturing is dull and tedious work.
- A massive reduction in error. Human beings make mistakes: it’s only natural!
- Elimination of hidden costs like invoice processing and obvious ones like paying employees to capture data.
- Enhanced productivity. Manual data capturing is incredibly time-consuming. Employees’ efforts can definitely be better spent elsewhere.
- Round-the-clock availability. While humans need to rest and sleep and have recreational time, computer programs do not.
Data Capture in Medicine
While computers have already revolutionized the medical world in a number of ways; there is still a large amount of handwritten or typed paperwork that has to be converted from physical data to digital data. Data capture in medicine is a mammoth undertaking.
Let’s take a patient’s ID barcode as an example.
Every document related to a given patient and their hospital stay will include their personalized barcode. This code leads to all the information that the hospital has available about the patient, their time in the hospital, their medical history, and their current condition.
This ease of access to information means that there will be no time wasted in an emergency situation. All hospital staff has access to correct and identical information whenever they need it.
All this data had to come from somewhere and get into a computer somehow: data capture software to the rescue! Much of this information was probably handwritten by doctors and nurses on charts, including the intake form and daily stats.
All this paperwork is not easily accessible by more than one person at a time, and it would be incredibly time-consuming to look through it to find one tiny detail. Data capture takes that jumble of words and makes it digitally readable.
Let’s look at medical trials. There is a vast amount of physical paperwork here as well: notes scribbled by doctors and medical scientists as they make their way through a long and arduous process, information sent in by patients as their conditions change.
Sparing a person to convert all of this to digital format is just too costly and time-consuming: data capture software saves the day again.
Key Benefits of Data Capture Software
If you want to improve the efficiency of your practice, clinic, or trial, automatic data capture is the only way forward.
Valuable time and effort are saved, the data is accessible much faster than it would otherwise have been, and there’s far less chance that any critical data will be incorrect, unless the information that the program was given was incorrect, to begin with.
This digitized information is accessible from anywhere in the world, which is a far cry from the days when doctors had to wait to get their patient’s records from their places by snail mail.
All of this improves things not only for the medical professionals but also for the patients involved in the medical sector.
The faster doctors have access to correct information, the faster and more effectively they can help a patient. Digitized information can also be analyzed and cross-referenced in the hopes of finding patterns that the human eye might not easily see.
Security is improved, and the medical industry takes further steps to minimize its contribution to paper wastage as we move forward technologically.
Wrap Up
It’s clear from the information we’ve provided that data capture software is a win-win situation: there’s no downside at all.
Medicine is about accuracy and understanding: if you use data capture software in your practice or trial, you are improving your access to information that will offer you both.