Q. We are trying to reclaim some office space and wish to scan and shred some boxes of old paper records. These paper records are rarely used but contain information on children and pregnancies that need to be retained. Any advice?

A. Take a look at Scanning and shredding documents: impact statement on the Publications and Reports section of www.gpit.ie When you are scanning and shredding documents you need to be clear about the processes you put in place. You need to decide if you will incorporate these records into your practice software management system or if you will store them on a hard drive or a separate document management system. If these are rarely used records you may consider scanning them as searchable pdf files (portable document format) and storing them on a separate hard drive. If you scan each patient record, made up of many paper documents, as one searchable pdf file and label the file with patient name and date of birth (YYYYMMDD), eg. Murphy_Mary_19560806, then you will be able to find individual files if you need to refer to them. Using the searchable pdf format means you can search for key words within a file, eg. 'Mater Hospital' and locate this information within the pdf file. Not all scanners can create searchable pdf documents. If available on your scanner software, the options for creating searchable pdfs may include: 'apply optical character recognition' (OCR) or 'make searchable'. Remember you need adequate security on the scanned records and you need to ensure they are safely backed up. There are companies in Ireland who specialise in scanning medical and legal records.