3 ms·

Hi could you please elaborate on how this would work? There have been several attempts at treating paper as first class - scanning reports, using a digital pen

Hi could you please elaborate on how this would work? There have been several attempts at treating paper as first class - scanning reports, using a digital pen etc. But none of these solutions is convenient. How would you interface paper with software?

breck 6y ago
My hypothesis—and I could be wrong—is that via innovations around 2-D programming languages, you could invent languages that are natural for casual users to write with pen and paper, that are identical to what a programmer would type. You'd never get a casual user to write {"weight": 145} on paper, but you could teach them to write: weight 145 And then it is really quite easy to write DSLs that parse things like that in a type checked way. Or, to put it another way, instead of trying to teach people JSON, why not teach programmers something new? One thing we picked up on quickly when talking to doctors and nurses in the field is that most of them come up with their own short-hand dialects for scribbling notes (for later data entry, sometimes). Why not make it easy to scan these microDSLs as is, and even define them formally and cheaply, at the last mile that then compile into a more common tongue for ingestion into bigger EMRs? Epic I guess has something somewhat along those lines, but not taken to the extreme.
- dreamer7 6y ago
  I'm not convinced that we can try to enforce any sort of format on blank paper for doctors. They fill templates also in weird and unexpected ways. They will write info out of order, in different orientations, outside the margins, etc. I would be interested in discussing this in more detail. Let me know if I can mail you.
  - breck 6y ago
    It's a good point. From what we learned each one had their own style, but the key thing was they all had a consistent style. If they are weird but consistently weird, should be okay. And we added things like anyfix to handle out of order. Sure anytime. email is in profile.

breck 6y ago

My hypothesis—and I could be wrong—is that via innovations around 2-D programming languages, you could invent languages that are natural for casual users to write with pen and paper, that are identical to what a programmer would type. You'd never get a casual user to write {"weight": 145} on paper, but you could teach them to write: weight 145 And then it is really quite easy to write DSLs that parse things like that in a type checked way. Or, to put it another way, instead of trying to teach people JSON, why not teach programmers something new? One thing we picked up on quickly when talking to doctors and nurses in the field is that most of them come up with their own short-hand dialects for scribbling notes (for later data entry, sometimes). Why not make it easy to scan these microDSLs as is, and even define them formally and cheaply, at the last mile that then compile into a more common tongue for ingestion into bigger EMRs? Epic I guess has something somewhat along those lines, but not taken to the extreme.

dreamer7 6y ago
I'm not convinced that we can try to enforce any sort of format on blank paper for doctors. They fill templates also in weird and unexpected ways. They will write info out of order, in different orientations, outside the margins, etc. I would be interested in discussing this in more detail. Let me know if I can mail you.
- breck 6y ago
  It's a good point. From what we learned each one had their own style, but the key thing was they all had a consistent style. If they are weird but consistently weird, should be okay. And we added things like anyfix to handle out of order. Sure anytime. email is in profile.