The Future Has Arrived

When Captain Kirk spoke to his computer on Star Trek, it seemed as though the possibility of computers understanding human voice wouldn’t become a reality until space travel was commonplace. We may not be vacationing on the moon yet, but speech recognition is no longer a fantasy in modern medicine. Doctors can now take advantage of speech recognition to create their medical records.

Our Philosophy

At MedGarde, we believe that speech recognition, like all our solutions, should meet two basic criteria:

• Simplify the way healthcare providers work.
• Improve the delivery of healthcare.

If these two objectives aren’t met, dictators will be reluctant to use the technology and, accordingly, you won’t find such substandard solutions available from MedGarde.

The Promise & Reality

The forecast for speech recognition continues to be a bright one. Imagine simply talking to your computer and having it understand you perfectly while punctuating your documents without making any errors. Your reports are ready as soon as you finish speaking and you eliminate traditional transcription costs entirely.

Unfortunately, in practical use, speech recognition is still an emerging technology. While it is very powerful, it’s not a perfected science. Dictators who do not speak clearly or slowly enough experience lower accuracy rates. Likewise, dictators who speak with an accent, often have little success with speech recognition being able to interpret them.

Today’s best speech recognition is capable of generating documents in first draft form. This helps to reduce turnaround time, but it is not a magic bullet – yet. Speech recognized jobs still require human intervention – during or after the speech recognition process. Until speech recognition is perfected to the point that it can perfectly interpret spelling, grammar, format and content, a human being will be necessary to verify the accuracy of speech recognized documents.

MedGarde's Speech Recognition Solutions

MedGarde currently offers the two speech recognition options described below:

Front-End Speech Recognition:

Dictators wishing to have an active role in the creation of their medical records will benefit from our front-end speech recognition solution. With front-end speech recognition, doctors go through a brief tutorial to learn how to use the system. Afterwards, they can dictate directly at their computer and see the words instantly appear on the screen as they speak. They are able to make their own edits and have their reports available immediately following dictation. Transcription costs are eliminated as the provider handles all editing tasks on the screen in front of them.

Back-End Speech Recognition:

Doctors who don’t want to be actively involved in the editing process can also benefit from speech recognition. Providers can dictate by phone, digital recorder or any other traditional method and have their audio files run through a back-end speech recognition engine. The engine generates a first draft document which in turn gets presented to a transcriptionist for editing. The entire process is seamless to the dictator.

While speech recognition is not a cure-all for everyone, it has been a viable solution for a variety of organizations. As the technology is continually refined with regular updates, its future shows great potential. MedGarde remains at the forefront of speech recognition to ensure that our clients receive the maximum benefit from this advancing technology.