Voice recognition technology making a difference at hospitals

Information Week has a story on how the use of voice recognition tools is making a difference at some hospitals. In effect, its use is empowering healthcare providers to be more efficient by reducing their time required for manual processes.

Some time savings is achieved due to the voluminous amount of data entry that is required. Dr. Fred Jorgenson, a faculty physician at Cleveland Clinic's Fairview Hospital, spoke of how Nuance's Dragon Medical speech recognition technology helps him avoid having to type in the "30 to 40 lines" of notes per patient. In fact, I just received Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional last weekend, and am currently getting the hang of it--I'll share more on it at a later stage.

Much like the ideal of the paperless office, large-scale implementations of voice recognition remain somewhat of a dream. The truth is that unlike spoken conversations, computers are unable to grasp nuances or unspoken words. The technology has continued to advance over the years though, and it is gratifying to read of the difference it is making.

Are you currently using any kind of voice recognition software? What do you use it for?

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Information Week