Voice Speaks the Language of Integration

The new efficiencies of speech recognition continue to grow in popularity as more vendors focus on its integration with electronic records. Many vendors at HIMSS are showing upgrades to their products that offer more features designed to increase physicians' efficiency, such as electronic signature. Since every dollar counts in the healthcare industry, vendors also are emphasizing their ability to improve workflow, cut transcription costs, improve report turnaround time, too.

Agfa HealthCare's Business Group (booth #5633) is showing the latest version of its voice recognition, dictation, and reporting system. Talk Station 3.1 allows radiologists to be even more productive by providing the ability to dictate, edit, and electronically sign reports to improve report turnaround time and decrease transcription costs. Productivity enhancements include the ability to insert fixed or customized data fields automatically. The result is a template that is automatically filled in without the need for user dictation.

Crescendo Systems Corp. (booth #6124) is distributing its recent white paper, "Leveling the paperwork mountain," that details advances in speech recognition. On the exhibit floor, Crescendo is showcasing its digital dictation, speech recognition, transcription, authentication and workflow management systems.

Dictaphone Corp. (booth #1023) is featuring its new Essential-Ci suite of products - the successor to its Enterprise Express dictation/transcription management platform. Essential-Ci fuses three critical technologies - voice processing, speech recognition and natural language processing - into a physician-friendly documentation solution proven to reduce costs and enhance productivity while fulfilling much of the clinical information needs of the EMR. Voice is the essential foundation for Essential-Ci; speech and natural language processing build on this foundation, unleashing new levels of productivity while converting rich narrative dictation into structured information that has many uses in furthering clinical repositories and medical knowledge bases.

Kodak's Health Group (booth #2313) is highlighting the integrated speech recognition capabilities of its Carestream RIS/PACS suite that also offers flexibility and an open architecture that interfaces easily with other information systems, along with an intuitive operator interface. The RIS/PACS suite delivers industry-leading features, such as integral 3D imaging.

MedQuist (booth #1200) is launching its digital clinical information capture solution that allows healthcare facilities to manage multiple physician input devices, users and clinical information sources. This new innovation features True Turnaround Time Reporting to voice capture technology that fully leverages automated speech recognition. MedQuist also is showcasing its automated speech recognition solutions, which are deployed in both "front-end" and "back-end" modes, depending on a hospital's workflow needs.

Nuance Communications (booth #6123) is showcasing its Foundation Speech and Dialog Technologies. Nuance's range of speech and dialog technologies allow customers to provide and hear spoken information using state-of-the-art and next-generation natural language dialogs.

Also on display is the Dragon MT Workflow System, a scalable, HIPAA compliant, web-based platform for end-to-end transcription processing. The Dragon MT Transcription Server manages initial capture of physician dictation through transcription, QA, e-signature and document distribution, including network fax or printer, e-mail clients, and HL7 interface to any HIS system. The Dragon MT Speech Server manages front-end and back-end speech recognition, including automatic identification of physicians who are good candidates for speech recognition.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical 8, a new release, is 20 percent more accurate than the prior version, and includes an updated and expanded library of medical specialty dictionaries, according to the company.

WinScribe (booth #1043) is showcasing dictation workflow management which helps healthcare professionals gain control of their transcription, and reduce backlog for better, faster patient results. Users of WinScribe software can dictate anywhere, anytime and have their dictation automatically routed to the relevant transcription staff, wherever they are located. By adding VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) the latest release of WinScribe also allows customers to make VOIP or internet telephone calls directly to the WinScribe server, bypassing the need for recorders or other equipment. The solution also supports the HL7 standards, making it simpler to integrate into hospital system environments.