Health Imaging & IT - October 2007 - (Page 64) vo i c e r e c o g n i t i o n : p r o v i n g i t s p o w e r Radiologists using SpeechMagic from Philips Medical Systems report turn-around times of less than a half-hour. system. Plus, you won’t have the capability to eventually expand to nurses using voice recognition and performing electronic documentation, for example. Rosenthal says that new technology will only be successful if it adapts to the way people already function. “You can buy the nicest solutions, but if people have to go out of their way to work in a different manner, they won’t use it.” That principle has played out, he says, as vendors are offering more ways to use voice recognition and bringing it into various applications. “The technology is fitting more into the way people work.” High failure rates in the early days of voice recognition were due to systems that asked busy clinicians to do things they wouldn’t normally do, he says. step by step Aurora Health Care, a 14-hospital, not-forprofit system covering eastern Wisconsin, 64 O C T O B E R 2 0 07 | Health Imaging & IT was working toward a fully electronic workflow in radiology when it ventured into speech recognition. PowerScribe from Nuance met the system’s workflow needs and “the voice was a nice additional feature we took advantage of,” says Ron Hartig, project manager. The organization purposely implemented voice recognition on a gradual basis. One reason for that was physician resistance, Hartig says. “I think resistance is normal. Most people resist change. We wanted the end-users to embrace it. We didn’t want to force it on them.” The organization still had its old system from Dictaphone so the physicians could opt to use that system or the new PowerScribe solution. The doctors who did use PowerScribe were able to reduce their report turn-around times very quickly, Hartig reports. Hartig views voice as another way of talking about patient care. “It provides timely information for us to support the care process,” he says. Transcriptionists are still available to physicians, but they also can self-edit their reports. Several doctors at one facility chose to do so about half of the time. Since some of Aurora’s radiologists are with independent groups, Hartig says the organization did not make anything mandatory. That first group of self-editors turned into several users who self-edit most of the time. Aurora has three hospitals using voice with another to start within the next month. Hartig says that facilities should start their preparations for the technology earlier than they think they need to. Plus, “publicize it as much as you possibly can. It’s really important to tell the people affected the most that there’s a learning curve and that there are going to be some hiccups in the beginning.” When Aurora spoke with other facilities about voice, PowerScribe claimed that one reported a 71 percent reduction in costs. Once more people at Aurora facilities are using the technology, he will work on calculating the return on investment. “The main thing we always try to do is look at how it’s going to affect the patient as we get faster turn-around of reports available to referring physicians. That’s where we really see the benefit.” Rosenthal says it’s very important to implement voice in phases. “Don’t deploy [it] on a large basis until you’ve run a good pilot and it’s functioning well,” he advises. His facility has been using voice for follow-up notes and is in the process of progressing to more complex documentation. Rosenthal has noticed that people are more willing to share their experience and knowledge about technology than they were in the early days of voice. “What we’ve done in the ED is now being deployed elsewhere in the hospital. Why reinvent the wheel each time? If somebody else can benefit, I think that’s good.” HealthImaging.com http://HealthImaging.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.