(HealthTech Wire / Interview) - Speech recognition can improve healthcare workflow in a wide range of clinical specialties and administrative tasks. With healthcare modernization top of the agenda across the Middle East, HealthTech Wire talked to Lincoln Payne, Nuance Healthcare Middle East Sales Director, about experiences with the technology in the region so far and why new hospitals can benefit quickly.
In the Middle East, Nuance has to provide a speech recognition solution for a multi-lingual, multi-cultural community of doctors – how does this work?
We offer English language speech recognition solutions across the Middle East. But the amazing thing about Nuance technologies is that the software can recognize many accents. It learns and adapts to its user and will even correct what you are trying to say. This is important, because, as you said, many hospital staff are expatriates, speaking English as a second language in a variety of accents and we need to ensure that all of them deliver consistent, high-quality medical documentation.
How aware of the value of speech recognition are healthcare professionals in the Middle East?
Those physicians who have practiced in the US or Europe, where speech recognition is widespread, are very aware of its benefits and have embraced it. But awareness also depends on the overall IT adoption in a country: in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman or Qatar, many customers already know how speech recognition works and look at it from a broader perspective – workflow optimization, integration, efficiency. Overall, we have a large footprint in radiology departments, but hospital-wide deployments are generally lacking.
With new hospitals mushrooming all over the region, there is an opportunity to change this and deploy speech recognition enterprise-wide right from the start, isn’t there?
Yes. The good news is that speech recognition doesn't need a complex infrastructure. For the Dragon Medical software we just need a network, reasonably good PCs and microphones. I’d prefer to emphasize the importance of knowledgeable systems integrators and staff training as the key to success. However, the key consideration should be the integration of speech recognition in a hospital’s workflow and information systems to maximize value in the investment. Workflows should be designed to enhance operations and productivity so that the entire project will be a success.
Are you referring to integration with the Electronic Medical Record?
Yes. In a survey of 1200 physicians, we discovered what we called the EMR dilemma. With a template-based EMR, 93% said it did not reduce documentation and 67% said that relying on the keyboard and mouse was a hurdle. Speech recognition can help to optimize investment in this type of technology, as Dragon Medical seamlessly deploys into all the major EMR products. Doctors can edit and sign off on the fly, reducing the chances of error and accelerating turnaround time.
But there is also the jobs issue. We have found that speech recognition frees up time for medical typists and secretaries to take on other tasks. Especially in radiology departments, where staff are so busy they actually need the technology to reduce the workload. This can be the case even in hospitals with a large budget – such as the Sheikh Khalifa Medical City in Abu Dhabi.
What happened at SKMC?
SKMC was the first in the region to implement a hospital-wide electronic speech infrastructure for all of its 500 doctors. Radiology and pathology are fully speech-enabled; all doctors use online speech recognition. Other departments use a combination of speech recognition and digital dictation. In the first month of working with speech recognition, the volume of radiology reports transcribed dropped from an average of 10,000 to 150. The turnaround times for radiology reports went from 3 days to just a few hours. Transcription “back-log” now stands at 2 hours and 12 minutes of dictation, which basically means that SKMC transcriptionists are transcribing almost in real-time.
How quickly can speech recognition be implemented?
Dragon Medical can be installed on one machine, or as an enterprise-level solution, depending on your IT infrastructure. If you already have an electronic medical record in place you can install Dragon Medical with less than an hour of training, and then start working immediately. For a large installation, Dragon Medical Network Edition has a thin footprint and operates in a Citrix environment. It can be managed centrally.
To optimize the speech recognition workflow, hospitals should have an EMR vendor and/or systems integrator that understands their business requirements. We therefore work closely with Abu-Dhabi-based company Emerging Technologies to help our speech recognition users achieve their goals.
When rolling out speech recognition in large hospitals, what is the best approach for a hospital to take for an existing infrastructure to demonstrate the most benefit as quickly as possible?
For hospitals migrating from an old to a new infrastructure, we recommend using a physician advocate to encourage physicians to use the system. Never underestimate the power of one-on-one training and refresher courses for physicians. The big bang approach can work very well but training must be done properly to ensure successful adoption and rollout.
There are issues concerning training in a multi-national environment with large classes and people speaking English as a second language. Physicians may be put on the spot because they do not understand a question fully or they might not understand the technology and be intimidated. These have to be taken into account.
Are there specific options to consider in providing speech recognition for the range of clinical specialties?
Dragon Medical supports close to 80 specialties and subspecialties, so you can speech-enable the entire hospital. The solution has become so popular and easy to deploy that we include nurses and administrators. You can even use it for writing emails or searching the web. Beyond the medical terminology, however, you have to give it more time to get used to the way you speak. This is done automatically so the system will get to know you better as you use it.
Where can visitors to Arab Health find out more about your technologies?
We will be at the booth of our regional partner, Emerging Technologies, in Hall 1, booth 1A50.
Thank you very much for the conversation, Mr. Payne. (HTW)
###
This is a HealthTech Wire interview. © so2say communications. All rights reserved.
Abstracts can be used in articles provided that HealthTech Wire is mentioned as the source. The introduction paragraph may be freely used to link to the original text on HealthTech Wire. Please contact us if you require further rights of usage.
