• Medicals Direct Group Ltd., a leading independent healthcare provider to the Insurance, Legal and Corporate sectors in the UK, implements Anoto’s DP&P technology on BlackBerry handhelds to transform the way that its team of 500 nurses capture data from medical examinations.

• 2 year, £400,000 investment by Medicals Direct Group Ltd., under which PaperIQ will supply an end-to-end solution. This includes digital pens operating on PaperIQ’s licensed server platform, all BlackBerry handhelds & BlackBerry Enterprise Server licensing, project consulting services, application development and air-time contract from PaperIQ partner and O2 Service Provider, Total Network Convergence (TNC).

• PaperIQ, a technical leader in DP&P technology is the first Global Anoto Service Provider to integrate digital pens with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server Architecture and BlackBerry’s MDS Studio application platform for rapid mobile application development & deployment.

• Medicals Direct’s DP&P solution benefits from the renowned BlackBerry security architecture and “push” capabilities for two-way data communication with their mobile nurses and secure real-time data capture using Digital Pen & Paper.

Following an extensive review of various data capture technologies, Medicals Direct Group Ltd. have awarded an initial 2-year contract to DP&P solution provider, PaperIQ. “Collecting and reporting on highly sensitive personal medical information, we were primarily looking for a solution that delivered proven security and enabled us to set new standards in the speed of reporting medical results to our clients.” commented Jonathan Benton, Managing Director of Medicals Direct Group Ltd.. “We considered Tablet PCs, but for 500 nurses this involved a very high capital cost and significant training and support challenges. We were immediately impressed with PaperIQ’s solution based on a combination of Anoto’s digital pen technology & the BlackBerry handheld and felt it was a great fit for our particular requirements. The digital pen allows our nurses to capture medical results with their handwriting as before whilst the BlackBerry provides a secure, encrypted environment for this data to be returned for recognition on PaperIQ’s server and real-time data integration and transmission to both our NurseTrak system and our customers’ systems.

“We’re delighted to have won this prestigious contract” commented James Shannon, PaperIQ’s Technical Director. “The BlackBerry wireless solution provides an ideal environment for not only capturing and transmitting digital pen data in an extremely secure manner, but also for managing a large number of mobile devices. Traditional challenges such as data encryption, over-the-air software upgrades and enforcement of device security are already well-known strengths of the BlackBerry architecture. However, the new MDS Studio application platform has also allowed us to incorporate a powerful workflow application into the solution. Nurses are now immediately notified of new instructions from the head office NurseTrak system, are able to update appointment status in real-time and receive instant feedback after transmission of a digital paper examination form. Further enhancements to the solution such as barcode reading are also planned for later this year.”

Implementation of the project is now underway and a full roll-out to 500 nurses is planned for March this year.