Sanitarium

Audience/Purpose:
For those interested in an allied heath profession – a non-medical aspect of the medical field, this definition is to clarify any misunderstandings or confusion about this [nearly self-explanatory] term.

Introduction
Medical Transcription is quite literally the transcription of a patient’s medical history. The process of medical transcription actually started off in the manufacturing industry. The first process was called Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) in 1975. This process was taken into the medical field after the transition to electric typewriters, word processors and computers. Today, Speech Recognition software (SR) is becoming overly prevalent in replacing MT’s, but Medical Transcriptionists will always be needed as editors since SR cannot be 100% correct every time. And since many physicians still use short-hand in their notes, transcriptionists that understand the language will be needed to assist the SR in interpreting the notes.

What Is?
Medical Transcription is an allied health profession; which literally deals with the direct transcription of medical data from voice-recorded reports as dictated by physicians/ other healthcare professionals into text format. Since most physicians, in both hospitals and private practices, do not have a lot of time, they tend to voice-record their notes and have transcriptionists later convert them to either electronic or physical hard copies. Most hospitals prefer electronic copies due to its ability to provide immediate access to subsequent departments or providers regarding the patient’s care. Also, the sheer volume of patients and the accompanying paperwork is becoming overwhelming.
Medical Transcriptionists can be onsite, working at the hospital, telecommuting employees for the hospital that do most of their work at home, or telecommuting employees that work as contracted MT’s that perform their work offsite from the hospital/clinic/physician group/ other healthcare provider. Some private practices also decide to directly employee a Medical Transcriptionist on site their own offices.

Today’s MT
The job of a medical transcriptionist is ever evolving (as long as we keep churning out new and more sophisticated technologies). Today, many MT departments work closely with IS and IT staff to stream voice transcription online – allowing the MT staff to instantaneously begin working on the transcription. This also allows healthcare providers to be able to use their PDAs and PCs (desktops and laptops) to record their notes and have it immediately reach the MT department for transcription
*Headings are not parallel because I find that differences and creativity of headings are more appealing to readers*

Works Cited
Shah, I. (2010, October). Medical Transcription. Retrieved July 2011, from Whatis.TechTarget.com: http://searchhealthit.techtarget.com/definition/medical-transcription-MT

Introduction:

With the plethora of tablets on the market today, the two tablets that have made the biggest splash this summer are the iPad 2 and the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 [powered by Android 3.1]. Though they are not the only tablets that are 3G/4G enabled, they have the most and the best features. By the end of this comparison, it will clear as to why the only two that matter are the Galaxy and the iPad.

Design:

The Samsung Galaxy [though not by much] has been crowned the thinnest tablet on the market. Although the Galaxy and the iPad look the same, by literally a hairline, the Galaxy wins. But this comes at the price of not having the slick, sleek, and sexy design of the iPad – instead having a plastickier feel.
As far as screen resolution goes, again both are very similar. The Galaxy brags a larger 10.1 inch PLS-LCD screen with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels – whereas the iPad has a slightly smaller 9.7 inch IPS display at 1024 x 768 pixels.
Both tablets have the same ports/buttons along the sides – both have a 3.5mm headphone jack, a proprietary data/charging port, a power [lock] button, and a volume rocker. The iPad has a slight advantage in that the buttons seem to be a little flushed, which makes them easier to locate in the dark [tablets are very useful when you can’t fall asleep, trust me].
One major difference in their designs is the speaker(s). The iPad has one single speaker on the back corner, whereas the Galaxy flaunts two speakers – one on each side- allowing for a simulated 5.1 surround sound experience.
On a side note, neither tablet allows user accessibility to the battery.
And now, for everyone’s favorite part – the camera! The Samsung Galaxy has a beautiful 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera with accompanying LED flash – the iPad’s camera is under 1 megapixel and no flash. When it comes to the 720p video recording, again the camera on the Galaxy comes out on top. Though the iPad shows a little more fluidity in its camera motion, the overall quality just does not match up to the beauty of the Galaxy.

Interface and Functionality and Performance:

Since already we are finding cell phones coming to the market equipped with dual-core processors, no reason to be surprised that both, the iPad and the Galaxy, are fitted with 1 GHz dual-core processors – Galaxy with 1 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 CPU and the iPad with its own Apple A5.
As a small, but important note, it is definitely important to mention that the email interface on the Galaxy is far superior to that of the iPad – that could be because Google [developer of Android] carries with itself a market specialty in email [Gmail], whereas Apple does not really have a large following in an email system.
The two tablets offer very different types of Operating Systems – The Apple iOS vs. the Android Honeycomb 3.1. The biggest and most important difference is user friendliness. Honeycomb offers much more of a PC like feel – including the ability to freely multi-task, personalize essentially everything, and notifications [from both emails and applications]. In contrast to Honeycombs fairly complex nature, iPad’s iOS is very basic and incredibly simple to learn and use. The iPad runs everything from downloaded apps, has a very vague sense of notifications, and does not allow for multi-tasking quite like Honeycomb. The friendliness of an OS should (but many times is not) the biggest factor that should go into a decision on technology. The iPad’s simple nature is great for those that are “technologically challenged”, whereas those of us that spend most of our day playing with computers – the Galaxy wins.

App Market:

Since iPhone came first, the market is quite a bit larger than the growing Android market. But both offer the major apps that people want and many little things are just fun to play with.

Conclusion*:

In pretty much every aspect other than complete simplicity, the iPad falls to the Galaxy and its powerful Android Honeycomb 3.1 – for technical people. Simplicity and ease of use, go iPad 2; pure power and ability to do more, go Galaxy. Oh and I forgot to mention that the Galaxy is enabled with 4G LTE on Verizon, but the iPad only has 3G…
And with a two year contract with Verizon, the much better Samsung Galaxy 10.1 is $100 LESS than the iPad.

*I am the proud owner of a Motorola DROID 2 and a Samsung Galaxy 10.1, therefore it is my duty to steer the public towards Android and away from the ever so simplistic and market driven Apple.