Modern telephone exchanges (now referred to as "switches" by the cognoscenti) tell the recipient the number of the calling phone. This caller line information (CLI) can be used to trigger a search of a database in order to present the record of the person calling. A useful success rate for home and work phone numbers would be expected in daytime practice, and a considerably better hit-rate for out-of-hours calls.

Adastra is expected to make this available in the next few months. They require an ISDN connection for the moment, and with prices for these falling it may be time anyone handling high volumes of short calls or with a requirement to pass much data seriously considered the change to ISDN. Doing the same from an analogue (old-fashioned ordinary) telephone line is possible and Adastra have announced a design that allows this. Implementation would depend on demand, no doubt.

The other side of handling telephony is the simple labour and error saving device of having the computer dial the number for you. This was introduced to normal use by Borland Sidekick for DOS, and has become convenient again with Windows 95 programs.

It is at least conceivable that a call could be recorded, recognised and transcribed into text at the computer's leisure, and the text either simply stored or parsed for significant phrases and these checked against the rest of the patient's record.

For the moment though, linking the patient record to the telephone will do.