My vows of a word/text expander

I have been doing medical transcription with the use only of the some of the autocorrect features of MS Office 2003. Not being fast enough of a typist, I too joined this forum to study on word/text expanders. The limitation of autocorrect and auto text is lack of visuals and limitations towards capacity. Before sinking money into an a text expander, I visited friends with different expanders. I observed that all expanders have their limitations and I would need to compromise one way or the other to use the same.

Smartype has the advantages of a large glossary of medical terms but few drug names and lab terms. There is no facility to import a list of drug names. The only way is to add each drug one at a time. Similar would be the case of adding phrases of physicians. Smartype by itself is a 12 MB software that integrates with MS Word. Taking all physicians and clinics into account that I am working on, I will have in the end would be a massive unwieldy glossary of phrases and drug names that will gobble a lot of RAM space. Then it also has problems in synchronizing with MS Office versions up to 2002/XP. With MS Office 2003 it has some problems. While Stedman's medical dictionaries and specialties and Quick Look have advanced to newer versions, Smartype has stagnated not giving the user any option to expand other than an adding a phrase or word one at a time. But it use is far simpler than other expanders, just pressing the space bar adds an entry and that it does not override one autocorrect shortcuts.

Now come to Instant Text V Pro with more powerful methods of glossary compilations where I can have compilations for different accounts or physicians within accounts. While working I have a few active glossaries like drugs, medstart, master list of physicians and/or patients, and the account/physician's phrase list. However, while typing I have to toggle to highlight the drug list if I have to type a drug, then back to highlighting physician glossary, and then next to lab glossary, and so on...If lab or medstart is not highlighted I cannot get "b.i.d. " by typing "bid." IT ignores my autocorrect features. If I try to type "b.i.d." then IT will creat two spaces after each period in "b.i.d." compelling be to correct the same by using back. I am quite sure that this method of using IT is definitely not going to increase my productivity but surely reduce the same. So the way around the same in Instant Text is to merge all the glossaries to creat one new glossary. Then for each account or physician, I will have to merge with it the glossaries of Medstart, Drugs, labs, physician names, patient names and then work with only one large highlighted active glossary. Whenever new drug names or medical terms come along I would need to update each of the respective glossaries as well as each of the master glossaries of accounts/physicians.

Big job just to be justifying the use of a text expander. Merging glossaries may have their share of problems while using the same, as "bid" may stand as shortcut for any number of words or phrases. Why cannot all the active glossaries be really ACTIVE when I am transcribing?

The only differences I find between Smartype and Instant Text is that while the first is archival being suited to older versions of MS Office and if its size is not controlled it would sink (crash) along with the MS Office, Instant Text requires a log of toggling, editing of newly created or merged glossaries where the document files would first need to be converted to text files, but can be used with all versions of MS Word as well as maybe Open Office so long as one keeps IT updated, the last update being 544.

Both of them use a portion of the bottom part of my 15" monitor.

I found IntelliComplete 3.31 as the ideal word/text expander that worked with any applications on MS Windows not being limited to MS Word and it worked with multiple libraries once the same had been activiated. Its main feature was that of auto-learn while typing and putting forth such words or phrases that a transcriber uses most frequently. Towards this, IntelliComplete use the feature of algorithm. However, this auto-learn feature had its share of drawbacks as the system resources used kept getting drained as the software continued to expand. The way around it was to disable the auto-learn feature and build new libraries or import the same as in Instant Text. Anyhow, IntelliComplete has been discontinued for lack of development resources as stated on the websitge: http://www.flashpeak.com/icomp/.

There are experts in this forum who have used both, Smartype and Instant Text for a long time. I would very much appreciate any criticism to what I have observed and written above. Is it possible to merge/import the glossaries of drugs, medical terms and phrases, labs, and the repetitive phrases of a physician all into one new glossary with little editing and then use it? I want to concentrate on typing and not toggling here and there other than using the master keys.

I confess I find your whole post rather confusing, maybe because of the poor grammar/sentence structure; however, I think you have managed to miss the whole includes feature in Instant Text. It is not necessary to merge glossaries in order to have several active at the same time. You can simply include a number of glossaries to work with them all simultaneously. You will also find discussions here and at InstantText's own forum of various ways to avoid unwanted spacing after periods, commas, or colons when using autospacing with punctuation. Manually backspacing is obviously not a sensible way to handle that.

As one who has used Smartype and Instant Text, you can even throw Shorthand into the mix, I can tell you that in my opinion Instant Text is the best expander.

You can make Instant Text do what YOU want it to do, tweak it all you want. I use IT now and it has improved my productivity by leaps and bounds. It does have a steep learning curve and I have to admit I still have more to learn. Talk about tweaking, I have it set to use the space bar to expand, which I know is not recommended and everybody says not to do that, but it works for me so what the hey. Smartype was the first expander I used and I just can't seem to get away from the whole space bar thingy. Although, those who use it will say that it just took really a short time to learn to use the marker keys.

Tonks is right, just have your main glossary and then add whatever includes you want, it's as simple as that. She's also right in that there are many ways around the spacing. One is to just do as I do and just put b.i.d. (or whatever you want) in your glossary, then you will have no spaces.

Though you did not mention Shorthand in your post, there is a 30-day free trial. It works pretty much the way Smartype does in that you can only use a short once and you also use the space bar to expand, though it does work with most platforms (I think) where Smartype will only work in Word.

Instant Text does not have a free trial but they give you your money back if you don't like it. But, gotta say, IMHO, IT rocks.

Marti

I think Instant Text is the best thing ever - I have been using it for years and love it. I think they could charge $500 for it and it would still be worth every penny.

Thanks Tonks. Your response gave me just what I was looking for. I am now incorporating this very feature in IT. From the feedback files for each of the physicians that I work on, I have compiled glo files giving each the name of the physicians. They basically only comprise of phrases as I have deleted the words section. Then I opened each of such files created through glossary viewer and used the include function to add QL2005 (that I got from this forum for drugs) and Medstart that comes with IT V Pro in that order. As and when I am able to lay my hands on respective specialty glo files, I will include them after QL2005. What a great feature! It did not exist in the older version of IT 3.5. As for the spacing, etc. I have disabled IT's automatic spacing and let autocorrect take over there. Now I am practicing to transcribe looking at the advisories only. Now whenever I add a drug to QL2005, the updated QL2005 reflects in each of the physician files. I currently work on cardio. nephro, hemato/oncology, and ortho systems.

One of my problems is that at best I can reflect only 3-4 advisory lines on my 15" monitor using MS Word 2003. I may yet need to keep the QL2005 and/or the specialty file active in the glossary if words do not jump up quickly enough in my advisory. The other problem is the compilation rules where I have to try different combinations of minimum word frequency and maximum words phrase in order to minimize editing. Is there a way to compile only for single words or only phrases rather than both?