Test Results Not Transferring to the EMR, or Tests Running Slowly

What's happening

If your site connects Benson to an outside occupational health EMR, the software sends each completed hearing or spirometry test to that system automatically through a database interface. When that connection is set up correctly, this is invisible — you finish a test, save it, and it appears in the EMR without any extra step. Two symptoms usually mean this connection has broken: results stop showing up in the EMR at all even though tests are completing normally in the booth, or tests that used to take a few minutes each start taking noticeably longer, sometimes two or three times as long. Both point to the same underlying cause more often than not, so work through this guide in order rather than treating them as separate problems.

A broken connection is usually not a data-loss problem. The completed tests are generally still on the machine, and once the connection setting is corrected they send through. But do not treat that as a guarantee and do not let it run for days, because there are conditions where records stop being retained. Correct it, then confirm the results actually landed.

Try these in order

1. Confirm what database interface the software is currently set to.
2. If it's set to a local database instead of the EMR interface, that's almost always the cause — reset it, following the steps below.
3. Check whether previously recorded tests are sitting in a transfer buffer waiting to send.
4. If tests are also running slowly, check the instrument's serial connection — Device Manager, drivers, and Plug and Play detection — rather than assuming it's the same setting as the EMR link.
5. If Plug and Play isn't detecting the instrument correctly, the fix is switching to manual configuration by serial number, not by matching COM port numbers.

Step 1 — Check the database interface setting

The software's connection to your EMR is controlled by a setting in its startup or company configuration screen, usually a dropdown for "Database Interface" or similar wording depending on your version. When this is correctly configured, it points to your EMR's connection details rather than a local database. Open that settings screen and confirm which option is currently selected before doing anything else.

Step 2 — Why this setting resets on its own

This setting is the single most common cause of "results stopped transferring" and it's rarely a deliberate change. A software upgrade, a reinstall, or a Windows update can reset the company configuration back to its default, which is typically a local database rather than your EMR connection. From the software's point of view nothing is wrong — it's saving every test successfully — but it's saving them to a local database instead of sending them out, so the EMR never sees them. If you had an EMR interface working before a recent upgrade, reinstall, or Windows change and it's not working now, check this setting first before assuming anything is broken on the EMR side.

To correct it: open the database interface setting, select the EMR/database interface option instead of the local database option, and re-enter the connection details for your EMR if the fields are blank (the specific endpoint or connection address is something we can confirm with you if you don't have it on hand). Test the connection from within the software before saving, if that option is available in your version.

Step 3 — Recovering results recorded while the interface was misconfigured

In most cases tests run during the affected window are still on the machine rather than gone, and they send through once the connection is corrected. Verify a sample of them actually appear in the EMR afterward rather than assuming a queue cleared successfully. If you cannot find them, call us before running anything else on that PC.

If your site uses Benson Cloud Services

Cloud Services has a documented holding area for exactly this situation, and it has a limit worth knowing about. When there's no active connection, or the connection is slow or intermittent, completed tests and daily calibration checks are encrypted and saved to the Transfer Buffer, reachable from the File menu. Records stay queued there until you send or delete them, even across a program restart, and you're prompted to review and send them at the next launch.

The Transfer Buffer holds 500 records and is not meant for long-term storage. Remaining capacity is shown in the top right corner, warnings appear as you approach the limit, and once it is full the Save dialog will not close and you cannot save new records until you've sent or cleared the existing ones. If you never connect and send, new data may be lost. That is the real reason not to let a known connection problem sit for days.

If your site connects to an occupational health EMR through a database interface rather than Cloud Services, the buffering behavior is not something we should guess at in a guide. Call us and we'll check what's recoverable on your specific setup before anything gets overwritten.

Step 4 — Slow tests and the instrument's serial connection

If tests are running much slower than usual, that points to the connection between the software and the audiometer or spirometer itself, not the EMR link — these are two separate settings in the software. The instrument connects through a USB Computer Interface Cable, and under normal Plug and Play operation the software detects it automatically; there's no COM port number for you to set or match by hand in that case. This commonly breaks after a driver reinstall, a cable swap, or a change in which USB port the cable is plugged into.

1. Open Windows Device Manager and look for the instrument entry (listed as "Computer Controlled Audiometer"). A question-mark icon on that entry means the driver isn't installed. If it's missing entirely, try a different USB port or a different cable before changing any software setting.
2. If the driver isn't installed or needs reinstalling, right-click the entry, choose Update Driver, insert the software installation media, and select "Driver from disk provided by hardware manufacturer."
3. If Device Manager shows the cable correctly but the software still isn't detecting the instrument the way it should — for example, the instrument order doesn't match your booth order — the documented fix is switching off automatic detection and entering the instrument's serial number manually, not matching a COM port number: open the instrument menu, choose Audiometer Setup, and on the General tab uncheck Enable PnP Instrument/Serial No. Assignment. Then on the Serial Numbers tab, enter the correct instrument serial number(s) in the correct order and choose OK.

A software-side COM port number only comes into play in one documented scenario: connecting to certain older third-party databases (the FOSHM/RA 500 protocol) over a direct serial link. In that specific setup the software's port setting uses the same COM numbering Windows does — there's no separate indexing scheme to reconcile. If your site uses that kind of legacy serial database link and the numbers don't line up, that's a case for IT and us together; for the far more common USB-instrument-to-PC connection above, Device Manager and the PnP/serial-number setup are the whole story.

When to involve IT versus us

• IT: checking Device Manager for the instrument's USB Computer Interface Cable, whether a driver reinstall or Windows update happened recently, and network-level connectivity to the EMR (firewall, VPN, or endpoint reachability).
• Us: confirming what the database interface setting should be for your EMR, providing the correct connection details if they're missing, and help recovering buffered results that aren't sending through on their own.

When to call us

• You've confirmed the database interface setting matches your EMR configuration and results still aren't transferring.
• Buffered results aren't clearing after the interface setting is corrected.
• You're not sure whether a COM port mismatch is the cause, or IT has confirmed the ports but tests are still slow.
• You suspect any test results were actually lost rather than buffered — this is uncommon, and worth confirming with us directly rather than assuming the worst.

Call (513) 891-0868 or email service@fosterinstruments.com with what the database interface setting currently shows and whether this started after an upgrade, reinstall, or Windows change — that context speeds things up considerably.