Hands down the best voice recognition software for medical transcription is Dragon Medical One. This speech-to-text solution is quite possibly the most advanced tool to streamline documentation and ease EHR usability. This rapidly advancing technology has the potential to change the medical transcription industry in both positive and negative ways.
The Medical Transcriptionist Role
One of the industries likely to be affected by voice recognition technology is the medical transcription industry. The role of medical transcriptionists is to listen to recorded audio files that doctors and other healthcare professionals. Then turn that audio into written text documents that can be saved. They spend years training to develop a very diverse set of skills. They need to combine an up-to-date knowledge of medical terminology. Additionally, they need to type upwards of 65 to 75 words per minute and have a precise knowledge of grammatical structure.
Will Technology Replace The Transcriptionist?
There is no doubt that voice recognition technology speeds up the documentation process immensely. The technology is fairly intuitive and requires little training to use. But the big question is will these new voice recognition solutions replace the medical transcriptionist? While it’s likely to streamline the process, this solution is not going to replace transcriptionists anytime soon. In some cases a transcriptionist will still be needed to keep an eye on the documentation to edit any mistakes. This will ensure there are no spelling or grammatical inconsistencies present that is often found in normal human speech.
A Perfect Combination
The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages of using a voice recognition solution in combination with a medical transcriptionist. In addition to achieving 100% accurate documentation, transcriptionists will have more time to edit documents for readability.
Some transcriptionists might consider this a negative, however. While voice recognition technology should be easy to adapt to, an influx of quickly trained transcriptionists with less formal experience could create competition. Fully trained transcriptionists may find it harder to compete in the job market and might have to accept lower pay than they are used to. But, hopefully, the speed with which projects can now be completed will help offset this negative.
This is definitely an advantage for the organization that uses both. It gives access to a broader pool of potential employees who can be trained much faster.
The advantages and disadvantages may vary depending on who you ask. But it’s pretty clear that voice recognition technology should be implemented in every healthcare organization.