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U.S. military leaders are touting a voice-to-text speech recognition program that they say has helped medical units spend more time treating patients by saving time in tedious documentation.
The program, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, is used by more than 6,000 clinicians at health care facilities of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marinas, according to the company that developed it, Burlington, Mass.-based Nuance (News - Alert) Communications Inc.
Military officials say speech recognition plays a critical role in maintaining the military’s electronic health record system – known as “AHLTA,” or Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application.
“Without speech recognition, many of us using AHLTA would spend hours more each week manually typing and mouse clicking various boxes in order to document care,” said Robert Bell Walker, European regional medical command AHLTA consultant.
Since the program saves physicians from manually typing in their diagnoses and information, it also creates more detailed records, Walker said.
“We have enabled our physicians to complete their documentation in a much more efficient manner with the added benefit of producing a much more narrative note,” he said.
In his State of the Union address four years ago, President Bush said he wanted most troops to have an electronic health record by 2014. The U.S. Department of Defense is leading the effort.
According to a survey cited by Nuance, nearly 80 percent of workers in medical treatment facilities in the four U.S. military branches chose the company’s voice recognition software.
The program helps physicians store accurate information quickly, according to Dr. Craig Rohan, staff pediatrician at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
“Since using Dragon Medical I find that medical statements are more easily captured during routine clinic workflow,” Rohan said. “The comprehensive medical vocabulary Dragon Medical works off of ensures that the symptoms or diagnosis we say are correctly documented.”
Michael Dinan is a TMCNet Editor. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
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