Granted, many of these requirements are necessary, but they exact a toll on clinical and administrative staff and reduce the time available to patients. Information technology is often viewed as a means of reducing paper shuffling. Ironically, though, it may save time and effort, but without affecting the paper load. Despite the best intentions of computer manufacturers, paper seems to be here to stay.
Paper has a lot going for it.
It's inexpensive, ubiquitous, easy to copy, and the epitome of portable. It doesn't even require batteries. Often, paper forms are simply the best means of acquiring data. The challenge is getting that data into a machine-readable format so it can be manipulated and analyzed. At first, a full-time administrative assistant had to manually key in report results to create a database and summary report.