Death to bad handwriting!

Back in 2007 Time Health reported that doctors’ bad handwriting was killing more than 7,000 people each year in the U.S. This report certainly rings a bell with us: one of the reasons we really wanted to introduce our online photography ordering service last year was to replace the handwritten forms that staff sometimes struggled to read. Whilst not exactly a matter of life-or-death, we still want to get these orders processed for you as quickly as possible.

Our online service certainly helps our staff understand immediately which items you want photographed, meaning we can fulfil orders more quickly. We were able to go from this:

to this:

Here’s hoping that the e-prescribing described in Times Health has helped U.S.doctors give a better service to their patients too.

Need an interesting image or the perfect picture?

The Wellcome Library has recently made ordering new photography from our wonderful collections a lot easier with our new online photography ordering service. We think this is a first – we’ve not seen any other library providing a service online quite like this.

We’ve made it easy for you to simply make your selections from our catalogue whenever you see the ‘request new photography’ button.

We’ve also given you the option to fill in all the form details yourself if you prefer.

 As well as making the process simpler for you, our staff are also benefitting from clear catalogue information and no more struggles with “doctor’s handwriting”.

We’ve already fulfilled online orders from as far afield as Germany and India. And don’t forget – you can already download many images immediately and for free from the excellent Wellcome Images.

Thanks go to everyone who helped to bring this to fruition: our users who helped our testing, Library and Wellcome Images staff, and staff from the Wellcome Trust’s web team, finance and IT departments.