The public health service of Chile’s capital proceeds with digitization and transmission project, adding speech recognition

Facilitating creation of radiology reports from anywhere in the country

Published: 10/22/2008

SANTIAGO DE CHILE, CHILE – (HealthTech Wire / Background) - The healthcare organization Servicio de Salud Metropolitano Norte (SSMN) is in charge of providing efficient healthcare networking for the northern area of Chile's capital region. It is one of six healthcare services in the capital region, and Chile's National Healthcare System consists of 28 healthcare services in total. Following the introduction of a new RIS/PACS system for the entire SSMN, they were looking for tools that improve report creation and subsequently the quality of medical care and treatment. 

The RIS/PACS system has been complimented by SpeechMagic speech recognition to maximize the effects of the Digitization and Transmission Project and to improve report accessibility. Dr. Francisco Avendaño is a surgeon, radiologist and head of the imaging department at the San José hospital in Santiago. He managed the digitization project for SSMN. A daily user of SpeechMagic, he reports below on the system’s roll-out and its benefits.

Dr. Avendaño, how long have you been using SpeechMagic?

We introduced SpeechMagic speech recognition for three hospitals in January 2008, when we started the digitization project. Now, around twenty radiologists are using it integrated with the RIS/PACS solution for report creation. 

What was your main goal when you introduced speech recognition?

The number of patients in our institutions increases constantly, and the services they use become ever more complex. This requires immediate access to information. In order to gain efficiency in our clinical processes, we were looking for a tool that would help us to reduce both report turnaround time and our dependence on factors such as human resources.

Besides eliminating manual typing, we gained immediate digital access to reports in our RIS, thus reducing turnaround times for radiologists and other specialists who depend on clinical results to start a patient's treatment.
 
Why did you choose SpeechMagic?

I was convinced by its high recognition rate and its automatic learning process, which guarantees automatic vocabulary updating. But of course, in order to have immediate and complete access to patient information, speech recognition is not enough: it needs to be integrated into the RIS/PACS system, which in our case is the root system for the three hospitals.

A decisive factor was the fact that the system allows access to the dictation tool at point-of-care within our three hospitals and beyond. Being a frequent traveler, this solution enables me to have remote access to our system. Medical staff can get information online from any site in the country, as long as an Internet access of at least 512 Kbps is available. This gives us great mobility and flexibility, beyond the benefits of automatic speech recognition for dictation.

What was the feedback from medical staff and secretaries? Did you meet any adoption barriers?

We found normal challenges, the usual ones whenever a new system is introduced; the training sessions, for example. But after a while it was easy and now we wouldn't do without this new tool in our institution. Reduced turnaround times thanks to new technologies that support our clinical management have come true in our healthcare services. We definitely made the right decision: before introducing SpeechMagic, we depended on nine secretaries to produce our reports; now we only need three for the same job. The six employees that have been freed from the monotonous typing of reports have been assigned new tasks that have added to the quality of our patient care, which means more productivity in the sense of having the capacity to care for a larger number of patients.

Dr. Avendaño, thank you for your time and answers.

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Before implementing speech recognition, report creation in the imaging departments at SSMN depended on analogue methods: the radiologist used to dictate on tapes that were then taken to the transcription department, where dictations were typed. This process not only meant an excessive report turnaround time; there was also a risk of mistakes, such as damaged or lost cassettes, bad sound quality, as well as grammar mistakes or mistakes in medical terminology. Another major challenge was the high cost of storing printed reports.

SSMN consists of three main hospitals, which were first in the country to start with the Digitization and Transmission Project: the 500-bed San José hospital, the 300-bed Roberto del Río pediatric hospital and the Instituto Nacional del Cáncer with 200 beds. 3,000 employees, including 500 physicians, meet the healthcare needs of a 1 million-strong population.

The system at SSMN was developed, integrated and implemented by the SpeechMagic certified partner in Chile, BorealSys.