Trends in Technology

Voice Recognition: The Technology That Is Essentially Revolutionizing the Health Care Sector

May 1, 2019 by Bobby J Davidson

The steadily growing affluence, not to mention the ever increasing population of the developed world has basically led to a really large addition to the overall workload of many, health care facilities. And this is not just in the case of the United States, but pretty much all over the world.

And in this regard, if you were to vector in the generally sedentary lifestyle of the individuals who constitute the majority of the populace in the developed world, it is easy to see why there is so much illness and afflictions that people end up succumbing to, and therefore require medical attention.

In the long run, this state of affairs has led to a steady increase in pressure on various different health care resources, not to mention the many health care services that the patients would actually need during the course of the treatment. Naturally, this has led to an addition in the already heavy workload amongst the large number of peoplewho work in this sector along with the entire associated primary, secondary and tertiary level hospices clinics, and hospitals.

o   Dealing with endless paperwork

And of course, along with these really high patient workloads will be included the massive amounts of paperwork that are part and parcel of the daily work routines of not just doctors, but also their assistants, nurses and attendants.

This is really the part where voice or speech recognition technology comes into the picture. Not only is this a really easy, but also a considerably less time consuming method of taking notes. And as a matter of fact, it is not just the doctors alone, but also their associated staff members too, who can do with a bit of help in order to substantially cut down their huge workload. This is possible with the help of voice recognition technology.

By using this technology they will have considerably more time to spend on the actual task that they should be performing, and that is taking proper care of the patients entrusted to them.

Long before speech recognition technology was mainstreamed, many of these people were effectively forced to spend a large amount of time, in making many different reports, in order to keep their patient record data as completely up to date, as possible.

However, it is vital to keep in mind the fact that all personnel related to the medical field have to be specific indeed, when it comes to the maintenance of their patients’ health records. This is largely because even the smallest mistake has the potential to be the causative factor of the most lethal consequences for the patient.

And such mistakes can be committed all too easily during the whole transcription process when the physician carefully listens and jots down the patent’s symptoms and prescribes the treatment. The physician then dictates his notes to his assistant who in turn, types them down and puts them in a file. In this process, lies the crux of the problem.

With so many people involved, not only is it time consuming, but the error of a catastrophic mistake also rises every time an additional layer is added to the equation. Following are different ways, though which SR can help in creating value for doctors and their support staff alike:

o   Greater flexibility of speech

Speech recognition software these days offers multiple options whereupon it is quite possible to detect even the most faintly mispronounced words, regardless of the accent or the dialect of the speaker. This is why today’s perpetually busy clinician now finds it pretty easy to store the relevant information in a digital (speech to text) format with minimum hassle.

Basically, all that the good doctor has to do, is to just ‘talk’ to his smart device suitably equipped with a speech recognition program) and it will do be able to do the rest,by typing out exactly what has been stated onto the microphone, verbatim.

Furthermore, many of the state of the art speech recognition software programs and apps that are not able to understand the spoken word, will actually stop the transcription in mid-sentence and ask the speaker for any clarifications before deciding to proceed onwards.

This way the software itself will ensure that any transcription related mistakes are kept to a bare minimum, in the final document, before it is proof read by the person dictating the notes.

o   EHRs or electronic health records

Many different hospitals as well as various other health care service facilities in many countries all over the world,have started utilizing EHRs or electronic health records for their patients. This has been done so that patient data can be safely, easily and confidently updated in actual real time.

Here, it is deemed pertinent to understand that should a doctor even take just 20 minutes to update the EHR,then that is certainly 20 minutes too much. Especially if he has a whole lot of patients to attend to. These 20 minute time intervals can keep him away from his core task of taking care of his patients.

This is the part where speech recognition (SR) technology comes into the picture. Thanks to this highly convenient technology, the doctor can reduce the amount of time required to update the EHR to a bare minimum, thus effectively ensuring that his precious time is spent in taking care of his patients rather than sifting through endless reams of paperwork.

In the light of the above, we can now safely see that speech recognition is not only the dawn of a new era, but should it be implemented across the board, it will easily serve the many physicians doctors and their support staff, while simultaneously augmenting their treatment efforts, so that they are able to do what they do best. And that is heal people.

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