Will speech recognition software kill medical transcription

Is voice recognition the new solution for medical transcription needs? Voice recognition or speech recognition has been there in the medical transcription field since some time.

Voice recognition software requires the doctor to personally ‘train’ the software on the speech pattern, accent, standard terms and various nuances of his/her speech pattern so that the software can ‘learn’ it and adapt accordingly. This could involve a huge time commitment from the doctor using it, which he may ill afford to make.

Time for dictation: Voice recognition software requires the doctor to change his style of dictation to include punctuations, grammar, spellings, detailed terminology, paragraph and report start and ending etc., as opposed to the free flow form of dictations that the doctors are used to.

Unlike the traditional method of medical transcription where the records are subject to rigorous proof reading and quality checks, here the doctor needs to spend considerable time editing and correcting before signing off on the reports

The accuracy level from voice recognition software is found to be about 60%-65%. That means correcting and editing the documents have to make up for the remaining 35%-40% accuracy.

When new doctors are added to the practice the voice recognition software has to be trained further to accept the speech nuances of the new joiners. There is no flexibility offered by voice recognition software for this.

In conclusion it can safely be said that voice recognition software will never be able to completely replace manual medical transcription. Medical transcriptionists will have an important role to play at least as editors and proofreaders.

Medical transcription requires a certain amount of training, subjective judgment and understanding the context to be accurate and relevant, which will not be possible to achieve completely through software, no matter how expertly created.

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1 comment:

  1. Absolutely not. Even whatever software for the industry comes in, the medical transcriptionist professional is still going to be needed. The job outlook for this industry for the next 10 years is even expected to grow more.

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