Talking with a doctor is rarely easy. Patients might feel intimidated by the white coats and jargon, may forget the names of their medication, can misinterpret a diagnosis.

To make the patient-doctor consultation more comfortable, collaborative and productive is the goal of an application developed by Texas Health Resources, which operates 13 hospitals in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and Microsoft partner Infusion Development. Using Microsoft Surface, Microsoft Corp.’s first surface computer, the solution uses digital health records and images – along with video and diagrams – to make the doctor-patient consultation more productive, more understandable and less apt to result in mistakes.

Texas Health Resources’ prototype is one of four Microsoft Surface applications for healthcare that Microsoft and its partners are demonstrating this week at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2009 conference in Chicago. Other partner demonstrations include an application designed to help patient scheduling and improve overall hospital efficiency, especially when experiencing a rush of patients such as in the aftermath of a natural disaster or construction accident; a tool for assisting children who need rehabilitation; and an application aimed at improving patients’ check-in experience at clinics or hospitals.

Together, these demonstrations showcase how the innovative Microsoft Surface natural user interface (NUI) can provide healthcare providers with solutions to solve difficult hospital-management or patient-care problems.