PubMed · 10277613
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C K Harmon. 1986. Choosing a data collection technique: why bar codes?. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10277613/
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Dialysis providers use computers to automate complicated tasks, ease staff burden, and develop knowledge or understanding to improve operations and patient care. Some applications are successful, others are not. Success can be economically quantified. Business--billing and accounts receivable computerization--can yield over $5.00 for $1.00 invested. The clinical case is more complex and difficult to economically justify. Computerization of clinical information for charge capture is the simplest application (< $1.00/treatment) yielding the greatest benefit. Economic benefits for improving quality of care through electronic medical records are more problematic. Provider benefit of clinical computing is strictly the net income from more dialysis treatments. Greater complexity--e.g., total electronic records--means more expensive systems and increased staff effort. Many systems cost in the $5.00 + range which must be paid by increasing provider overhead. Dialysis providers must determine the point where computerization no longer decreases operational costs as computing cost increases. This is a classical optimization problem; its solution is crucial to the economic health of the dialysis enterprise.
In search for a cost effective gel documentation system applicable for different fields of molecular biology, we analyzed the capabilities of a cheap CCD-camera originally designed to capture images for transmission through the internet (web-cam) with regard to gel documentation. The camera was connected to a personal computer by universal serial bus (USB) and used for the documentation of DNA separated on agarose gels and stained by ethidium-bromide using the software provided with the camera. The web-cam provided digital images of sufficient quality for routine documentation and combined the low set-up costs of a Polaroid system with the low running costs of video capture systems, hence is ideal as a start-up system and as augmentation to existing equipment.
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