https://www.wired.com/story/iphone-notes-app-purest-reflection-of-our-humanity/
Sometimes the simplest note-taking apps are the most profound.
As medical records technologists going back to the 1800’s discovered, if we over-engineer our tools, doctors and nurses will break the bounds of what is allowable documentation to let the story come out.
From Annals of Internal Medicine (requires login) a brilliant history of medicine article by Eleanor Siegel
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/0003-4819-153-10-201011160-00012
The image:
What is fascinating is that: in the 1800’s, hospitals began keeping paper medical records, one book for each HOSPITAL WARD of about a dozen patients. No patient-specific medical records. If you wanted to look back, you would find the ward book for the year, find the day the patient was in the hospital, then look for the patient’s name.
Each patient would be an entry on the page for the day. There was only room for ‘intervention’ and ‘outcome’. No place to write thoughts, observations, theories, learnings.
So, doctors would at times turn the page over and use the blank back of the paper to write (in this case):
This patient came in with what appeared to be an apoplectic stroke. He was interesting in that he had a dextrocardia. He later developed a clinical picture which we could not explain.
Diagnosis: Hemorrhage into cerebrum
Complication: ?Syphilis
