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Voice recognition stumbles in languages other than English
By: Douglas Page
Radiology departments across the globe do what they can with limited resources and personnel to provide efficient, quality healthcare. Voice, or speech, recognition continues to be a hot topic at SCAR conferences, as it promises to reduce transcription costs and streamline the reporting process.
But is voice recognition technology a one-size-fits-all solution? Two presentations in a scientific session at the 2003 SCAR meeting offered opposing viewpoints on whether VR technology can meet the needs of a busy radiology department.
On the pro side, Sharon Antiles of Children's Hospital Boston gave a case study of a successful VR implementation at her institution. To activate both PACS and VR, Children's set up a radiology information technology team made up of members who would understand both the IT and the clinical aspects of the implementation. The team assigned one project manager to focus entirely on the RIS and VR.
The team researched vendors, crafted a detailed contract with the chosen vendor, and then planned, planned, and planned some more. The planning paid off for the hospital: Mean report turnaround time at Children's prior to VR was 55.2 hours. Following VR implementation, turnaround for residents, fellows, and attendings dropped to 16.8 hours for finalized reports. Reports dictated solely by attendings are finalized within three hours of exam completion.
"There are many benefits to transitioning from conventional dictation to VR," Antiles said.
VR may also reduce transcription costs, which can run as high as $250,000 annually for institutions like Children's. These factors make a cost justification to senior hospital administration relatively easy. The development of an appropriate interface during the implementation, however, was not so easy.
"As more practices migrate to PACS and VR, the burden shifts to sites without these technologies," Antiles said.
To remain competitive, such sites must provide the same level of service to referring clinicians as the more technologically advanced practices. This is especially important as competing hospitals branch out into suburban areas by constructing freestanding imaging centers, she said.
Voice recognition does not, however, meet the needs of radiology departments in places like French-speaking Montreal, according to the opposing presentation.
"Speech recognition apart from English is not that well established," said Dr. Luigi Lepanto of Centre Hospitalier de l'Universite de Montreal.
But in the absence of VR, electronic signature can be a cost-effective first or intermediate step toward a paperless operation. Lepanto studied the impact of e-signature on turnaround time in his department. The department incorporated an e-signature module into the report management module in its RIS about six months after the initial RIS implementation.
Lepanto and colleagues focused on two sectors within the RIS database: abdominal ultrasound and chest radiography. They documented the time it took from the transcription to the final signature of the report by the radiologists and found that the median time from transcription to final signature for abdominal ultrasound examinations decreased from 11 days to three days with the introduction of e-signature. Median time for chest radiographs decreased from seven to three days.
The results indicated that, while the department could not fully utilize voice recognition technology at the time, e-signature was a viable stopgap measure to increase efficiency.
"Electronic signature significantly shortens the time interval between transcription and finalization of radiology reports," Lepanto said.
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