Can I use the same Insight Notes backup subscription with multiple iPads?

2/23/2014

Insight Notes is currently designed for use with one user and one iPad. The backup application is not currently designed to sync different backup databases or resolve syncing conflicts. Thus, Insight Notes is not currently a good match for multiple users who want to share the same backup credentials, or a single user who wants to use Insight Notes simultaneously on multiple iPads.

2 Comments

Angel R Egozcue

8/20/2015 09:38:26 am

We are a group of three psychologists who see patients switching between us and we all use a different ipad so that we can write notes without interrupting the other but we need to be able to see what is happening with our patients and I as a director need to supervise the interns. It would be very nice if we can keep all records in the cloud synchronized even if it costs a bit more. The app is great but it could use that improvement for larger groups of clinicians. As it is it works only for individuals.

Insight Notes

8/20/2015 11:34:24 am

Thank you for your comment, Dr. Egozcue

This is an issue we struggled with for quite some time, but ultimately found to be too complex at this time to implement. The primary technical hurdle stems from the fact that Insight Notes works without having to be connected to the internet. If Insight Notes was a web-based application we would be able to designate the most recent version of a note as the "master" version because we could assume that all users would be able to see the changes that came just before. However, because users can also edit offline, this creates version conflicts issues that are too complex to reconcile via code at this time.

An example to illustrate the point might be helpful:

On Monday, User A opens version 1 of an existing treatment plan note from the database that was last synced to her iPad and makes substantive changes, thereby creating version 2 on her own iPad. These changes are offline.

On Tuesday, User B opens version 1 of the treatment plan note on his iPad, sees a typo, and corrects it, thereby creating his own version 2 of that note. That change is also offline.

On Wednesday, User B makes additional but more extensive changes to that same treatment plan note, thereby creating a new version 3 on his own iPad. User B then backs up to the backup server.

On Thursday, User A backs up to the server.

The coding difficulty is how to program the app and server to reconcile the difference between User A's version 2, which was produced before User B's version 3, but synced later. Would User A's version 2 overwrite User B's version 3? Or, would User B's more recent version nullify the work that User A did on Monday? You can see how complex this is. We would essentially have to code the app to use judgment about what changes are more important, and this is a challenge that is relatively unique to applications that allow for offline editing.

By way of comparison, Google and Dropbox allow offlline editing of documents, but they also haven't been able to solve this issue. (They save both versions and let the user decide which version to keep.)

Partly for this reason, and also because we saw the need for a product geared toward our solo practitioner colleagues, we elected to highlight the backup as a backup, and not as a synchronization.

We do agree with you that Insight Notes, at the present time, is not the best choice for multi-clinician practices who need to be able to share notes between multiple iPads. Having said that, we do know of many group practices who use Insight Notes, but the way they share notes is by exporting the notes to a common admin who then uploads the notes to a common cloud storage for viewing. But that type of setup might not work for all.

We are also aware of several wonderful cloud-based charting programs that are likely better geared towards multi-clinician practices. Some of those might be a better fit. Like all things, no matter which way you go there are some hard tradeoffs.

Thanks so much for your comment. It provided a wonderful opportunity to answer this very complex question!

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.

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