Aintree to go-live with digital dictation
- 31 March 2008
The Aintree University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has selected G2 Speech’s speech recognition technology for a trust-wide implementation in April.
G2 Speech’s MediSpeech, powered by Philips SpeechMagic, will be installed at the trust’s two hospitals for clinicians and secretaries to use to improve turnaround times in getting diagnosis letters sent to GPs.
MediSpeech identifies section headings in a dictated text and allocates each part of the report to the corresponding field in the hospital’s patient record system. The relevant data is made available for communication between the various medical specialties in the hospital, streamlining workflow and protecting patient privacy.
Aintree’s project manager, Elaine Kelly, told E-Health Insider: “We have had a pilot running in the surgical and medical directorate for a while now and have seen the benefits the system can bring. The main objective of the project was to meet PCT-set targets for diagnosis letters to be sent to GPs, and the pilot has seen a much faster turnaround of letters being transcribed and sent to GP practices.”
According to Philips, speech recognition-based transcription has proven to be twice as fast as manual transcription from a digital recording.
Kelly added: “The solution will be used by 350 clinical or medical staff and 135 transcription secretaries. We have noticed in the pilots that the audio quality is much better, helping to ensure improved accuracy. The dictations can also have preset importance status on them, so secretaries can deal with high priority cases immediately.
“Dictation can be sent electronically immediately at the end of a consultation, so straight away after a doctor has finished with their patient. This is helping to cut out the hassle of secretaries having to find doctors and get hold of tapes to listen to.”
Office managers will also use the system to ensure that transcriptions are dealt with as and when they are needed.
Kelly said: “The system also has a workflow tool which enables office managers to see at any one time exactly how much work is outstanding and for how long. This can be categorised to say what the letter is, and how urgent the letter is. Based on these urgency levels, secretaries can then easily identify which letters need prioritizing and they can listen to the dictation on this straight away rather than having to listen to a whole tape and wait for the relevant section.”
Once rolled out across the trust, Kelly says the next objective will be to consider the use of voice recognition technology.
A G2 Speech spokesperson told EHI: “The large number of patient records being recorded on a daily basis at the University hospital Aintree has required them to replace their existing analogue dictation system with a digital one.”
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