by
Kristen Fischer, DOTmed News | February 02, 2012
From the January/February 2012 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Nuance, a leading speech recognition technology provider, has introduced two systems that work for physicians whether they’re technology-savvy or not that lets them meet meaningful use requirements.
Speak and transcribe electronically—sans the transcriptionist
Dragon Medical lets the doctor talk into a microphone and navigate by voice to different sections of the EMR. For example, the doctor can record what happened during a patient consultation, but also move to other areas of the platform to write a prescription or look up test results. AnyModal Conversational Documentation Services (CDS) and ChartLogic’s PrecisionVoice are similar. They both let the clinician use dictation to move between EMR prompts, and also let the doctor use his or her voice to access other functions to order tests, create referral letters or write prescriptions within the EMR.
“We’ve found that our PrecisionVoice engine is an easier, more familiar charting method than a point-and-click charting method that is common amongst the EMR systems in the marketplace today,” says Brad Melis, ChartLogic’s Founder and Executive Vice President.
Belton said there are approximately 800,000 doctors in the U.S. and bout 200,000 of them using Dragon, which can be integrated with other popular EMR systems such as Allscripts, Epic and Meditec.
Traditional transcription with a tech edge
The other platform Nuance offers is the Health Information Management (HIM) system, which is ideal for less technologically-savvy physicians that use dictation but don’t want to review their own reports and prefer to use a traditional transcriptionist. This lets the doctor speak on the phone or via the computer, and then runs the dictation through speech recognition software. When the transcriptionist gets it, the draft is already visible electronically so the transcriptionist can simply edit it instead of typing it up from scratch. The completed file is then uploaded into the EMR to await the physician’s signature to ensure it meets his or her requirements.
“The transcriptionist is no longer typing word for word [with this system],” Belton notes. “We’re driving down the cost of transcription using speech recognition.”
Belton said there will always be a need for transcription, but this option improves transcriptionist productivity and boosts turnaround time for reports. Approximately 200,000 physicians currently use this system, which is also compatible with popular EMR platforms so it attains meaningful use standards.
