April 8th, 2009
Voice recognition a solution for medical luddism
There are always excuses for avoid Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) and other forms of automation, as I learn each time I approach the subject here at ZDNet Healthcare. (Picture from Nuance.)
Security remains a favorite, because security will never be perfect and thus the fear of imperfect security is always valid.
Right behind that is klutziness. Doctors don’t like keyboards. It takes too long to input all that data. Time that could be better spent with patients.
The solution to the second objection turns out to be both simple and available. Speech recognition.
Two years ago my friend Lamont Wood wrote enthusiastically about how much better speech recognition solutions were getting. He called to tell me his productivity doubled.
Since then things have only gotten better. The U.S. Army is rolling it out in a big way, even on battlefields.
At HIMSS Nuance, a leader in the field, is out with a study claiming 69% of doctors find Electronic Health Records (EHRs) with voice recognition are easier to use. The company has launched a certification program to make voice recognition standard with EHR solutions like Allscripts.
Nuance is not alone in this business, as 3M is also signing contracts.
Nuance wants people to “storm the blogs” and talk up its solution, called Naturally Speaking, but this post has nothing to do with that call.
It’s just that if you combine voice and pen-tops into a solution that looks-and-feels like the pads doctors already use, only better, objections to automation are bound to decline.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 04/08/09
