Word-processing equipment for hospital pharmacy applications

Experiences with the use of three word-processing machines in the pharmacy departments of two hospitals are reported. Criteria used in evaluating the equipment included keyboard design, disc storage capabilities, software practicality, print format options and security of data. The applications studied were label production, storage of personnel information, scheduling of repetitive tasks, and composition of drug bulletins and procedure manuals. The Wang System 10A was the least useful. The Lanier LTE-2S required the shortest training period for routine tasks. The IBM System 6/442 was the most flexible. Word-processing equipment may be used effectively in the hospital pharmacy department to handle time-consuming, repetitive tasks.