Handwriting recognition on mobile devices: State of the art technology, usability and business analysis

The software company FERK-Systems has been providing mobile health care information systems for various German medical services (e.g. Red Cross) for many years. Since handwriting is an issue in the medical and health care domain, a system for handwriting recognition on mobile devices has been developed within the last few years. While we have been continually improving the degree of recognition within the system, there are still changes necessary to ensure the reliability that is imperative in this critical domain. In this paper, we present the major improvements made since our presentation at the ICE-B 2010, along with a recent real-life usability evaluation. Moreover, we discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of current systems, along with some business aspects of the vast, and growing, mobile handwriting recognition market.