Voice Recognition And Medical Transcription

Yes, voice recognition in the medical transcription field has indeed become a reality. Doctors sputter and mangle their dictation into the phones as usual, but software now translates this into English words.You’ve probably heard different opinions and views on this subject. If you’re a medical transcriptionist you may even be concerned about voice recognition taking over your career… and you’re not alone.

Sure, human beings are still needed. You see, when the doctor corrects himself or asks the transcriber to go back to a previous section and insert more text, software doesn't know how to do that. A person does.Presumably this is because editing is easier and faster than transcribing. Well, it can be, but there is still a lot of correcting to do. A 20% to 30% pay cut is hard to swallow when nearly as much time is spent on the job.

At this time there is no voice recognition software which can handle this type of voice recognition. It is impossible for the software to determine actual speech from mistakes in conversation, background noise, heavy accents, etc.

So what does this mean for our future?

Rumors of MTs being out of r a job have been around long before I became an MT. Eight years later, there are still no real advances in this field.

Can voice recognition ever replace transcriptionists?

Sure it can.

If a doctor is willing to sit down and take the sufficient time to train his voice recognition software to recognize his voice and speech patterns (this takes time and is not done automatically), yes it is possible.If the doctor thereafter dictates very clearly, using proper punctuation in his speech (stopping for periods, pausing for commas) without any background noise or interruptions.

Not unless every physician out there is willing to take the time, energy and ongoing effort to train their voice recognition software and maintain a certain standard of dictation.This being said, it is important to keep in mind that this is not and will probably never be the case for ALL physicians.

I don’t see that happening any time soon. Doctors are busy people, remember?

If anything, us MTs should embrace voice recognition and use it as a tool to help us in our MT careers. If applied properly, it can be a time-saving tool. So why not use it for our purposes? Another emerging trend is the implementation of speech recognition technology, which electronically translates sound into text and creates drafts of reports. Reports are then formatted; edited for mistakes in translation, punctuation, or grammar; and checked for consistency and possible medical errors.

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