RE: Medical Software Industry

["Sonja Marnewick" <Sonjam -at- medemass -dot- com>]

Sarah Stegall wrote:  

>Sonja: I used to work in the medical software industry, particularly in
software designed to translate medical images >(X-rays, CAT scans, etc.)
from analog to digital format so that it could be analyzed for anamolies
(in diagnosing 
>cancer, for example). 
>The best piece of advice that I can give you is to know your audience.
If you are writing a manual for, say, 
>radiological technicians, keep in mind that this audience typically has
lots of experience, a very high turnover rate, 
>almost NO time to read manuals, and rarely has a four-year college
degree. We focused on streamlined instructions, 
>"cheat sheets" placed next to a machine, decals and stickers ON the
machine, and a manual that was designed as 
>a flip-chart with LOTS of illustrations. Please understand that I am
not saying you should "dumb down" a manual, 
>only that you should respect the users' time and experience.

Sarah: Thank you so much for your input. This has been extremely
helpful.  

Just a few notes:

My audience seem to be the receptionists, and bookkeepers, not really
the Doctors, as they all have people running their practices, from a
reception and accounting point of view (which is essentially what our
software is about)

Writing on a high level could then be considered as an appendix to the
"user manual".

As far as the grammar is concerned, English is my second language, but
that is no excuse when writing a manual.  
I do however have dictionaries, and a thesaurus on my desk to help a bit
:)

The "cheat sheets", and stickers now seem like SUCH a good idea, it is
strange to me why we have not thought of it earlier, as the procedures,
and processes to follow could be easily outlined there
e.g. follow these steps to add an account, edit, delete, print etc.

Again, thanks for your input.  To a new technical writer (I don't think
I quite deserve the title yet) comments from you are invaluable.

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