Following a successful release of NOAH System 3.6, HIMSA is busy planning for the future needs of NOAH users. The next generation of NOAH is still in the planning stages and a release is at least two years away. However, user surveys and customer feedback have put HIMSA well on its way in planning the future software platform for the hearing care industry.
According to Søren Kristensen, Product Manager at HIMSA, one result from the surveys and usability studies was that users were requesting features already integrated in the current NOAH System 3.6. Kristensen explains the current NOAH System is based on an older Windows design, so some of the features are not easily found. The future of NOAH will mean an updated interface, so that needed features are easier to find and access. Other notable NOAH features that may be integrated as a result of the surveys and studies include:
- A patient detail page, where common patient information can easily be seen and accessed
- Powerful tools for locating and exporting single patients and patient groups
- Flexibility in how various NOAH functions can be opened and accessed to accommodate differences in work flow among users
- Possibility of WAN support
In order to achieve the wide variety of improvements in NOAH, HIMSA will harness new technologies such as .NET, while keeping NOAH compatible with older NOAH modules and other equipment.
"New technologies make it much easier for our programmers to implement a variety of new usability features," stated Kristensen. "However, a NOAH upgrade must be as quick and as painless as possible for NOAH users. New features aren't worth the price if users must start from scratch."
HIMSA will strive hard to make any new NOAH upgrade as backward compatible as possible. However, a future version of NOAH will not support Windows 2000. HIMSA's surveys show the majority of users are already using PC's with Windows XP or Vista and expect the number of persons needing to upgrade by the time of the new release to be very few.
For more information on HIMSA and the future of NOAH, please visit www.himsa.com.
