Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust provides acute services in addition to care in the community, particularly homecare midwives and nurses. Caring for patients at home brings with it a large amount of administration and note-taking using paper forms. The Trust needed to find a more efficient way for the midwives and nurses to take notes electronically whilst on patient visits. It considered providing laptops equipped with 3G cards, but the idea encountered significant resistance from carers, who were uncomfortable with the technology as they felt it would get in the way of patient care.

Faced with these objections, Richard Sargent, ICT Specialist/Digital pen project lead at Portsmouth wanted to find an alternative solution that would enable community nurses and midwives to take notes and complete paperwork more efficiently without disrupting patient care.