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August 17, 2011

Nuance Speech Recognition Products Save Doctors Time, Give Patients Better Care



Doctors are always looking for ways to save time. Smartphones have helped. Imaging technology that allows them to look at X-rays remotely. And probably one of the biggest ways, speech recognition equipment that allows them to create medical notes just by speaking, then have them transmitted directly to electronic health records (EHRs).

Anthony Guerra at informationweek.com reported in February that a new study has found that speech recognition technology can produce staff reductions, improve report turnaround times, and increase physician satisfaction. In fact, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported last week that the University of Pennsylvania Medical College and a Massachusetts technology company hopes to create 20 new jobs in Pittsburgh through a project to develop new speech-recognition software for doctors and hospitals.

Today the technology company, Nuance Communications, Inc. announced Dragon Medical Practice Edition, the latest addition to its portfolio of medical speech recognition solutions, according to a press release posted at marketwatch.com.

Dragon Medical Practice Edition allows clinicians and healthcare organizations to speak or dictate medical notes directly into any EHR in real-time, the press release reports, allowing physicians to “capture a more thorough patient story without sacrificing time,” according to the press release.

Nuance says that this version of Dragon Medical Practice Edition “yields a 15 per cent improvement in accuracy over previous Dragon Medical releases,” and that it will be especially useful for physicians in small practices, which make up an estimated 40 percent of the total U.S. physician population, according to the company.

“I rely on the EHR for point-and-click data capture, but for subjective information, as well as my conclusions and impressions, I use Dragon Medical. It allows me to capture the unique, patient narrative and add detail that simply cannot be documented with templates,” said Andrew Fireman, MD of AMS Cardiology, a 17 physician cardiology practice based in Abington, Penn., in the press release. “Since speech-enabling our EHR, I have also been able to spend less time editing medical records and more time focusing on patient care.”

The press release notes that Dragon Medical “is helping more than 20 percent of small practices make this transition while saving as much as $10,000 per clinician/per year in reduced medical transcription costs, decreasing report turnaround time, and improving the comprehensiveness of patient medical records, which leads to more accurate reimbursement.”

“Dragon Medical is a proven EHR-support solution that helps clinicians to fully and efficiently capture patient data as part of the medical record,” said Evan Grossman, vice president of product strategy, athenahealth, in the press release. “Incorporating speech recognition software from Nuance as part of the athenahealth's cloud-based EHR service, athenaClinicals, is best practice and will deliver tremendous value to our customers as they work to create high-quality, real-time patient documentation.”

To find out more about Nuance Communications, visit the company at ITEXPO West 2011. To be held Sept. 13-15 in Austin, TX, ITEXPO (News - Alert) is the world’s premier IP communications event. Dena Skrbina, senior director of Solutions Marketing at Nuance Communications is speaking during “What’s Really Driving the Hosted Customer Care Trend?” and Christy Murfitt, senior manager of Solutions Marketing at Nuance Communications is speaking during “Harnessing the Customer Service Experience with a Multi-Channel Approach”.

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Deborah DiSesa Hirsch is an award-winning health and technology writer who has worked for newspapers, magazines and IBM in her 20-year career. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell
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