Overcoming speech recognition limitations is crucial for success, especially in the healthcare field.
In this article we take a look at how this technology is helping doctors and how to overcome common limitations.
With the ever increasing population doctors are feeling burned out. Some doctors having 50+ patients per shift. This is why we are seeing so many shifting towards technological innovations to optimize their work.
Furthermore, regulatory compliance requirements require tedious paperwork for every patient. This means that today’s doctor spends more time on reports than actually taking care of the patient.
In regards to patient documentation, the smallest error can often have serious consequences. These errors are almost always accidentally input into the system. Still, this can create limitations for the doctors, staff, and the patient.
Shifting To Technology
As doctors shift to speech recognition technology for documentation, the possibility of an error increases. Apart from spelling and grammar errors there are many different types of issues that a physician might face when using this technology.
Let’s look at some of the top 3 reasons that someone may experience speech recognition limitations:
1. Training
The system can take a long time to recognize the speech patterns of individually programmable user profiles. Programming has to take place laboriously, since it takes time for the machine to understand the different accents and adopt them accordingly.
2. Background Noise
A good quality speech recognition microphone must always be available at every workstation. Nevertheless, even with a really good microphone, recording in a busy hospital or clinic setting is not always easy.
3. Power Outage
If there is a power outage, the doctor is dictating vital information can be cut off in the middle of his documentation. Causing one to lose extremely important data that might be of pivotal significance.
4. Accuracy
While these programs are very accurate, there is still that small percentage of inaccuracy. For example, a blood pressure medication may be misunderstood and inputted into the system as an entirely different medicine.
Overcoming These Limitations
Many of these limitations can be easily overcome with a bit of common sense and foresight.
For example, using a quality noise cancelling dictation microphone would help get rid of unwanted noise pollution. While speaking clearly and slowly would also help ensure that the microphone picks up the right words and inputs them accordingly. Lastly, using a uninterruptible power supply would take care of any power outages as well.
Luckily with the release of newer cloud-based speech recognition solutions like Dragon Medical One, all of these limitations are virtually eliminated.