Could doctors use a gestural interface like this to write templated notes in an EMR on touch devices? Most of the notes that doctors write have repetitive structures. Hence, EMRs like Epic have come up with features like Smart Text, which expand special phrases into large templated sentences with certain bits of data prepopulated and keywords that can be toggled between values (present/absent, etc.) with the keyboard.

But the key complaint with these EMRs is that you need to type to use them, which is awkward and breaks the flow of conversation with a patient. Eye contact is important during patient interviews. Therefore, most doctors use paper and type them into the EMR later (waste of time).

A lot of people (and companies like drchrono) think that the way forward is to use tablets like the iPad mini or the Galaxy Tab, which balance the intrusiveness of the computer form factor against the ability to enter data. A pain point of tablet EMRs is text entry--but like I said, a lot of notes that doctors write have predefined structures, like code.

I think there is potentially a lot of money in elegantly solving this UI problem with a new interface like Tiled Text.