Friday, September 14, 2007

Crossing Platforms and Software Generations

In recent years, many offices have purchased computers that came bundled with certain types of software. The marketing behind such sales was aimed at wedding the consumer to a specific software manufacturer's suite of products.

  • Although most medical transcriptionists do their work on a Windows platform, many universities (and teaching hospitals) are networked on a Macintosh platform.
What happens when your attempts to hook up with a transcription service are stymied by the fact that you do not use the same software and/or hardware? Does that mean the agency you've chosen can't do your transcription?

Not at all.

Remember that you seeking to engage the human talent that can transcribe your work. Any problems with electronic incompatibility can usually be overcome with the right software utility. Sometimes the solution involves finding a file format like Rich Text Format (RTF), Extensible Markup Language (XML), or Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) -- which can be recognized by programs using either a Windows or Macintosh platform. Sometimes the problem is actually involves "backward compatibility" issues between different generations of the same software.



Next: Choosing The Right File Format

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