Is speech recognition the latest way out for transcription needs? Voice recognition or speech recognition is one of the latest advances in the transcription field. It has been flaunted as the way out for a physician’s documentation requirements.

How does it operate? The doctor is offered a digital platform by the speech recognition company where the doctor can dial in and narrate his patient notes at the end of the day. The software converts it to typed form, which is made available to the physician to edit and correct as required

Seems simple enough. But is it as easy as that? Apparently not! Voice recognition needs to be evaluated on all the parameters used while finalizing a hospital’s medical transcription vendor.

Time conserved: When transcription requirements are contracted out one of the core benefits is the time conservation factor. Time is a scarce commodity for doctors and they would like to utilize it for providing superb care to their patients. But when voice recognition software is used the doctor has to spend more time on it in the following areas:

Preparation time: speech recognition software requires the doctor to personally ‘orient’ the software on the talking example, accent, standard terms and an assortment of nuances of his/her speech pattern so that the software can ‘learn’ it and adjust accordingly. This could involve a substantial time commitment from the physician using it, which the physician may ill afford to make.

Time for dictation: voice recognition software requires the doctor to change his style of dictation to include punctuations, grammar, spellings, detailed terminology, paragraph and report start and ending etc., as opposed to the free flow form of dictations that the healthcare professionals are used to.

Time for proofreading: Unlike the traditional method of healthcare transcription where the patient transcripts are put through rigorous proof reading and quality verifications, here the healthcare professional needs to spend significant time editing and correcting before signing off on the reports
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Accuracy: The accuracy levels of the finished reports is of utmost importance as it affects care of the patients at every level as well as forming the basis for all further documentation needs. The accuracy level from voice recognition software is found to be about 60%-65%. That means correcting: and editing the transcripts to recompense for the remaining 35%-40% accuracy.

Prices: The price factor for speech recognition software will fluctuate according to the number of people using and the size of the organization. It will also have to factor in add on expenses needed for editing the records to a suitable level. One may become aware of that it is costing more per line than was quoted in the beginning.

Learning period: When healthcare facilities seek out for solutions for transcribing their patient medical records they would like to have services that are proficient and exact from the very start. In the case of voice recognition software there is a definite time to become adept that influences the quality of finished transcripts till the software ‘learns’ to follow a particular doctor’s speaking patterns and even then the correctness levels are only 60%-65%.

Agility: When new doctors are added to the practice the voice recognition software has to be oriented with further to take on the speech nuances of the new joiners. There is no agility delivered by voice recognition software for this.

In the end we can definitely say that speech recognition software will never be able to totally substitute manual medical transcription. The valuable aspect to be pondered upon here is that patient medical records are created of human beings, dictated by human beings and therefore needs another human being to transcribe it. Medical transcriptionists will have an important role to play at least as editors and proofreaders.

Medical transcription needs a certain amount of training, subjective judgment and understanding the context to be correct and related, which will not be possible to achieve completely through software, no matter how expertly created.

For the medical transcription needs of a hospital one should look for a service provider that provides commitment on accuracy, delivery time, realistic costing and security