Newbie question - need help to build keyboard for medical profession

[dom3333]

Hello everyone,

I am new to this site and am completely new to keyboards.

I am a medical doctor, and thought of making a custom keyboard in order to have more efficiency in writing clinical notes. I would need some of your knowledge to help me know what to look for.

Here is what I am looking for:
- Keyboard with ~30-60 additionnal keys, that can be customized to write a symptom (for example, pressing a button would write "chest pain" in my electronic medical record) ; pressing another would write "no chest pain")

I think such a keyboard would enable me to write quickly the positive/negative symptoms of patients and make it easier and more relaxing than typing everything while at the same time questioning a patient, which is what I am currently doing.

I was looking into Tipro keyboards that have also included a software for custom key configuration. I would be very interested in having your opinions on this, if you have suggestions on where I could find such a keyboard and software to configure the keys into text.

Thank you

Dom

[davkol]

derp

[Techno Trousers]

Assuming Rick Hodgin is serious about building these, then one of the larger ones should have all the keys you'd need, and you'd be able to have the key caps custom printed to meet your needs. I have no idea what his production timeframe is, though.

Model F like keyboard designs

[taylorswiftttttt]

removed

[kbdfr]

To put it short: your best bet is quite obviously a Tipro 8x8 matrix board (used in addition to your usual keyboard).
The software is freely available from Tipro, programming is more than simple.
That would be 64 keys, each programmable on 4 layers, so you could arrange it to your needs without any problem (for example a "no" key to negate the then following symptom, or both "chess pain" and "no chess pain" on two different layers of the same key).

I just moved and my stuff is scattered in dozens of boxes all over the place, but I know I have at least one of those matrix boards (probably several). Please PM me if interested.

[seebart]

Here you go:

keyboards-f2/rafi-compudent-t10829.html

wiki/RAFI_Compudent

[RickCHodgin]

Assuming Rick Hodgin is serious about building these, then one of the larger ones should have all the keys you'd need, and you'd be able to have the key caps custom printed to meet your needs. I have no idea what his production timeframe is, though.

Model F like keyboard designs

I am serious. And I am working on it. And it does take a long time. I have a Blender key design model and am working on a real prototype. I am planning to write the keyboard driver software up front to get people inspired.

Thank you,
Rick C. Hodgin

[orihalcon]

Technically, Soarer's converter can do what you are saying with any existing PS/2 or older keyboard. There are Model M 50 key's that are sort of matrix like with relegendable caps and you could make each one a "macro" that would type out the text you want.

[codemonkeymike]

What about a Model M 122? http://www.pckeyboard.com/page/category/PC122
The other option is picking up a matrix keyboard as a second keyboard and using it only for hotkeys. Something like a plank/preonic or one of those cherry PoS terminal keyboards. PoS keyboards have the added benefit of having relegable keycaps

[dom3333]

Thank you all for the recommendations.

For what I gather here, for the sake of simplicity and experimenting, going with a Tipro keyboard would do the trick. It is a pretty impressive piece of hardware developed by Mr Hodgin ! I will keep it in mind as well for the future.

I hadn't thought of text expansion software, it's a really good idea. I'd see these as another complementary tool to use.

I will experiment with these and keep you informed about how's it going !

[czarek]

Not sure what OS you're using, but on Mac it would be pretty easy with any MIDI controller and software called ControllerMate (actually program I miss most when using other systems than Mac) that allows you to map any input to any output. That means you can map any key on a keyboard, mouse, game controller, or MIDI instrument to any system event, be it HID (like mouse move, click, key input) or even AppleScript, so even very complex system automation.
All done using simple visual programming (which also allows simple stuff like loops, delays, repeats, logic functions, conditions).
Extremely powerful stuff.

Otherwise you can do it pretty easily with Arduino and a set of push buttons (or even MX/Alps switches) if you like some DIY.