Software Garden’s Note Taker HD ($4.99)
Note Taker HD is extremely similar to Notes Plus in functionality. The app is implemented well and offers many customization options, but lags just behind Notes Plus in simplicity and interface design. It similarly had a very high quality final product that very closely resembled the original writing sample.
Note Taker HD’s Zoom Mode is highly effective, but is slightly less intuitive than Notes Plus. In Notes Plus, when you are reaching the right edge of the zoom box, it shows a mirror of the edge of your text on the left side of the box, so you can very precisely know where your next stroke will be, in relation to the stroke before. In Note Taker HD, it does not mirror any text, so your next stroke is a leap of faith. It usually comes out in the right place, but it does make the spacing just slightly less precise than when compared to Notes Plus.
Some advantages over Notes Plus include the ability to resize the Zoom box and to easily turn on/off the auto advance feature. It also has the undo stroke button immediately next to the Zoom Box, useful, and something Notes Plus does not have.
Another disadvantage is the lack of folder support to categorize your notes, although there is the option to have favorites or add tags to your notes. Unfortunately, the implementation of these features is fairly difficult and complicated to use.
Feature-wise, Note Taker HD has nearly all the same output features as most of the other apps: printer support and ability to e-mail as PDF. A nice touch is that you can customize the settings of the PDFs that are created, including the margins and page backgrounds and lines. However, it lacks support for Dropbox and Google Docs, a big disadvantage.
In summary, Note Taker HD is extremely functional and useful, but there are not many reasons why one would pick it over Notes Plus.
Handwriting Recognition: Too Good to Be True?
Phatware WritePad for iPad ($9.99)
Phatware is a well-known company that’s been developing handwriting recognition software for mobile devices since the old Windows Mobile days. They have developed two very complex apps, WritePad and PhatPad, which both utilize their experience in handwriting recognition software in order to live out the dream of having the benefits of both handwriting and text on the iPad. We’ve chosen to review WritePad because it’s more focused on creating simple documents predominantly centered around text.
As the only notepad app that features handwriting recognition, WritePad has a lot of potential, but is simply not accurate enough to use, especially in the medical field. For the most part, when using simple text and when writing large and clearly, the app was fairly accurate (80-90%) in interpreting handwriting, which is very impressive, but still far from perfect.
Furthermore, when you start throwing medical jargon and abbreviations into the mix, the accuracy of the text drops significantly.
Another downside to the app is since it’s essentially a word processor with handwriting input, it doesn’t allow for much spatial complexity, such as columns. You just start writing from the top of the page and work your way down.
WritePad does offer many features to try to adjust for its limited dictionary. One can add words to the spelling dictionary, which dramatically increase the accuracy of the recognition software. It also allows for what Phatware calls Shorthand, which consists of simple commands that insert templates of words. For example, you could put in the shorthand command of “PEX,” and then it could insert an entire normal physical exam. This could potentially be dramatically useful for doctors.
Unfortunately, despite its grand promises, this sort of handwriting recognition app really needs to be tailored for medicine to have practical use for doctors. I could see it being fairly effective for people who might use it for more low maintenance purposes, such as a personal journal, simple note taking, or for basic documents.
Pros:
– Accurately interprets handwriting
Cons:
– No column support
– Poorly interprets medical jargon
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, out of the three approaches, the leading candidate is the one that fully utilizes the Zoom Mode feature. As you can see from the writing samples included, this method is the only way to generate a final product that actually resembles a handwritten progress note. And in the Zoom Mode category, Notes Plus is a standout app, at a decent price of $5.99. If it offered Dropbox support, it would be nearly perfect.
The other approaches have their uses, and both Penultimate and WritePad are very impressive apps, with usability in creating simple notes. For the particular purpose of creating more complex handwritten notes, however, Notes Plus is the way to go.
David Ahn is a first year internal medicine resident in San Diego. He is currently an iMedicalApps contributor and has a significant interest in technology and gadgets.
