Digital signal preservation approaches of archived biomedical paper records — A review

While the biomedical records are available in digital form in some areas, huge amounts of paper-based health records are still generated on a daily basis. This data used to store for decades but is of no benefit for research organizations, as the paper-based health records cannot be efficiently utilized for clinical studies. Also, the recorded and stored medical records may get blurred, damaged or affected by different factors such as changing weather conditions. This paper presents the types of biomedical signals plotted on graph papers. It also reports needs and requirements for digitization of biomedical paper records. This review aims to encompass the digital signal preservation approaches employed for archived biomedical paper records. The digitized signals can be of great help to physicians for reducing human errors in the diagnosis and to research organizations for various retrospective studies.