Speech Recognition System Slashes Turnaround Times for Radiology Reports

A private hospital group in central London is speeding up medical report creation: 2 hours 40 minutes from dictation to report sign-off.

Almost instantaneous report availability increases patient service and confidence. Nuance Communications, Inc. (Burlington, MA, USA), a leading supplier of speech systems, reported that its SpeechMagic technology has been supplied to 12 sites of HCA International, a central London (UK) healthcare facility. SpeechMagic is one of Nuance's healthcare speech recognition system geared towards integrated information capturing networks typically found in larger departments, hospitals, and healthcare systems.

Integrated into Euromed's MedSpeech reporting solution, SpeechMagic has reduced average report creation times from 24 hours to two hours and 40 minutes. Adoption levels among radiologists surpassed the initial goal of 60% by the end of the project: with two-thirds of the rollout complete, more than 96% of the dictations are already processed through speech recognition.

"The surprisingly high adoption level means that the profiles are good, that reports are turning around faster, and that integration is optimal," said Kaye Bonython, imaging informatics program manager at HCA International. "This is even more surprising, as we had to deal with concerns. People had negative past experience with speech recognition and they thought it would result in too much time added to their reporting schedule. But the initial negative thoughts simply vanished once radiologists saw that the technology had progressed to a state where it could really improve the timing."

Providing timely reports to patients is extremely important to patient management. "Many patients come to have an imaging procedure prior to their meeting with an outpatient consultant. They want to have the image done immediately, get the report, and leave. There is no doubt that speech recognition has improved patient service--they know their consultant can base decisions on both--the right image and the right report. We give them a higher level of confidence," said Ms. Bonython.

HCA's decided on SpeechMagic after six-week long pilots of three products, which had been fully integrated into the organization's picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) to address potential implementation issues prior to the actual roll-out.

Nuance's healthcare systems provide a range of speech-driven clinical documentation and communication solutions that enable healthcare provider organizations to reduce operating costs, increase reimbursement, and enhance patient care and safety. Nuance has recently acquired Philips Speech Recognition Systems (PSRS) and the SpeechMagic technology from Royal Philips Electronics (Amsterdam, The Netherlands). PSRS' solutions such as SpeechMagic are now an integral part of Nuance's healthcare range of speech-enabled clinical documentation and communication systems.

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