Results on a laptop, records somewhere else
A technician spends the day at a client site doing audiometry. The audiometer software on the laptop stores every test. Back at the office, someone prints the audiograms or opens each one on screen, then types the thresholds, or at least the categorisation, into the employee's record in your clinical system. Spirometry from the same day goes through the same routine with different software.
The retyping takes hours after every clinic day, and it happens after the fact, so a changed result that needs attention is noticed when the typing reaches it, not when the test was done.
Why the results do not flow
Surveillance devices come with their own software, designed to run and store the test, not to feed an occupational health record system. Your clinical system may be able to hold results, but nothing connects the two.
- Device software exports in its own format, if it exports at all.
- Employees are identified on the device by whatever the technician typed, often a name only.
- Laptops used on site are not always synced back promptly.
- Categorisation or comparison with the previous result is done by a person reading the printout.
- Different devices, or different software versions, are used across your technicians.
What retyping costs
Technician and admin time goes into transcription rather than testing. Transcription errors creep in, and a wrong digit in a threshold can change a categorisation. Results that need follow-up wait until the typing gets to them. And the raw data from the device, which is the best record of what was measured, is often not kept with the employee's record at all.
There is a reporting cost too. Employers want to see results across their workforce, in categories, by site and year. When results are retyped as summaries, that analysis is only as good as the typing.
| Stage | Manual process | With an import |
|---|---|---|
| Getting data off the device | Printout or screen | Export collected after each clinic day |
| Identifying the employee | Name read and searched | Matched on ID, uncertain matches held |
| Recording results | Typed thresholds or category | Imported values with the source file kept |
| Comparison with last test | Read by a person | Calculated and shown side by side |
| Flagging change | When noticed | Flagged by your rules for a clinician |
How we build the device import
- We look at the export options of each device's software, such as file exports or a database, and build a reader for each.
- Before a clinic day, the due list is loaded onto the laptop with employee IDs, so technicians pick people from the list rather than typing names.
- After the day, the export is uploaded or synced, and each test is matched to the employee and clinic day by ID.
- Results are written to the employee record in your clinical system, or held in a results store linked to it, with the original file attached.
- Categorisation rules your clinicians specify are applied, and results are shown next to the previous test.
- Anything your rules say needs review goes to a clinician queue, and the review outcome feeds the next recall date.
- Workforce summaries per employer are produced from the imported values.
Categorisation and what counts as a significant change are clinical rules set by your service. We implement them as written and show the working.
After the clinic day
The technician uploads the day's export, and the results are in the records soon after, matched and categorised. Admin time on transcription disappears. Clinicians see changed results in a queue, not buried in a pile of printouts. And employer summaries come from the actual measurements.
Because the source file is kept, any query about a result can be checked against what the device recorded, not a transcription of it.
Does this describe your surveillance admin?
- Audiograms or spirometry reports are printed and retyped.
- Results take days to reach the employee record after a clinic.
- Changed results are spotted during typing, not on the day.
- Device laptops hold results that are not backed up centrally.
- Employer summaries are built by hand from typed categories.