Digital Archive and Access to Lifetime Military Medical Records

The problem to be solved is how to accurately capture, store, and utilize handwritten information obtained from scanned in paper forms such that patients and their civilian healthcare providers can access military health records. The successful solution will enable better healthcare to discharged service personnel and their families through the creation of a continuous record of care. A further potential benefit of this effort is better coordination and communication capabilities between civilian and military healthcare personnel in disaster management scenarios. The key step to success is building the capability to recognize diverse handwriting inputs across multiple healthcare forms. To accomplish this we will apply a novel form-specific and field-specific, constrained vocabulary system approach that we believe will significantly increase character recognition speed and accuracy from handwritten inputs. In Phase 1 we will demonstrate that >90% word accuracy can be achieved for specific scanned in fields from specific forms from diverse handwriting samples. Working with DOD and TRICARE personnel in Phase 2 of this grant we intend to further refine and expand the form and field defined, constrained vocabulary system to achieve >99% word accuracy.