Monday 22 December 2008

Can you be truly paperless? Yep!!

Dear Bloggers

As you probably have already guessed, I love technology! At the same time, I like to promote the traditional values of medicine and the basic principles and practice on which medicine was built. This seems kind of strange doesn't it; almost at the extremes of the spectrum of old and new but hey, that's me!

One thing that causes immense problems is the build up of medical papers on my desk and the inability to carry all of those papers around and to access them just when you need to.

However, I have found a way to be entirely paperless and still be able to access all of those papers!

Yep is a software package for the Apple Mac that scans your Mac hard drive for all PDF documents and organises them into a logical list for searching and viewing. It does far more than that! It allows you to scan pages and creates PDF files so that you can keep all of those medical papers with you on your laptop! It does this within the software itself. The PDFs can be tagged as well. Great!!

When displaying the files, they are projected full screen just as if you were reading the hard copy.

Of course, you also need a flatbed scanner to get the most out of the software!

The software is free to use for 21 days afterwhich, should you wish to continue using it, you must purchase it. It is inexpensive in the grand scheme of things and will make your life so much more liveable with all that extra space created with no paper getting in the way. :-)

This means having a clear desk, easier access to information, portability and organisation!

If you are interested in this software then please check out the Yep website.

With all those papers now as PDF files, they can be transferred to your PDA such as your Palm Pilot, WM5/6 smartphone, Blackberry, iPod Touch or iPhone. Another good piece of software for rendering PDF files fully viewable on the Palmpilot, WM5/6 or Blackberry devices is the Repligo software by Cerience. This reformats PDF files and allows full view or just the text to be displayed in flowed format. Moreover, it will also allow you to highlight the text in different colours. The conversion / viewing software will only work on a PC running Windows - not Mac (boo hoo).

If of course you are ultra-mobile with a smartphone having a data plan that allows cheap heavy data use, you could upload all of your PDF files to the 'internet cloud' e.g. MobileMe, GoogleDocs etc. There are several programmes availble on the iPhone that allow just this kind of access and it can save you time, smartphone memory and avoid having to lug around a laptop. The viewing experience on a smartphone is not great compared to a laptop / desktop machine but for quick access and mobility it seems to be the way that a lot of people are now choosing for access of information.

If you have any solutions to avoid the paper and killing of the world trees then please drop me a line and get published!

Christmas will soon be here and then the New Year. I will try and keep the blog articles going during this busy time, so drop in from time to time -- but I am sure you have better things to do :-)