One case archive we analysed held 293 documents. Only 134 were digital text a computer could read. The other 159 were scans and photographs — handwritten notes, stamped discharge summaries, faxed reports — with no machine-readable text at all.
An early pass of the analysis used only the readable files. It reached a clear, coherent, and wrong conclusion: that little could have been done. When the 159 scanned pages were rendered and read one by one, every decisive fact in the case turned out to live there — including several warnings the treating doctors themselves had written down at the time.
Why this matters to you
The documents most likely to matter are exactly the ones most likely to be lost:
- Discharge summaries — where treatment plans (and planned-but-never-given medicines) are actually written
- Handwritten consultation notes — where a doctor’s real-time reasoning and warnings live
- Outside second opinions — often printed once and never entering the main hospital file
- The scan report as issued, not just the one-line summary someone typed later
A simple system any family can run
- One folder, everything, always. Physical or digital — but one place, from day one.
- Photograph every paper the day you receive it. A phone photo in good light is enough.
- Name files by date and place:
2026-03-14_CityHospital_discharge.pdfbeatsscan(7).jpgforever. - Never surrender your only copy. Hospitals may keep originals; you keep images of everything.
- Include the “small” papers — pharmacy bills and drug vials establish what was actually given, which is not always what was planned.
Complete records change outcomes, not just analyses
A second-opinion oncologist can only be as good as the file in front of them. The difference between a complete archive and a partial one is not academic — in the case above, it was the difference between “nothing more could have been done” and a precise list of moments where the path could have bent.
When you bring a case to our desk, bring everything — any format, any language, any handwriting. Attach it all to your ticket. Reading the unreadable pages is part of the job, because that is where the truth usually hides.