Solutions, trends and opportunities in medical documentation – a look back at Voicepoint’s speech recognition event

In May, Voicepoint organised Switzerland’s first ever medical speech recognition event. Around 150 visitors from various healthcare sectors took part in the conference at the Dolder Grand in Zürich. Specialists in the field and the Voicepoint advisory team provided information about the clear advantages of speech recognition and their integration in existing workflows and systems.

Nowadays, doctors spend on average less than 13 percent of their working hours interacting with patients. One reason for this is the large amount of administrative work that has to be dealt with.  Furthermore, hospitals in particular are under more and more pressure: they have to work more efficiently, faster, as well as improve data quality. Speech can be used to improve the process. Whereas old-fashioned typing produces 40 words per minute, speech can produce an average of 120 words.

With its four sites, the Luzerner Kantonsspital (LUKS) chose Voicepoint’s Winscribe solution when evaluating uniform products. The dictation management system was also enhanced by the integrated speech recognition software Dragon Medical. Manuel Brunner, Deputy Director of Medical Informatics and Alexander Spuhler, ICT Application Manager are very happy with the decision: “The Luzerner Kantonsspital is setting new standards in medical documentation with Voicepoint’s dictation and speech recognition solution. Thanks to the additional integrated modules, Voicepoint Device Administrator, Voicepoint User Loader and Voicepoint Firebox, we have witnessed a 60% increase in productivity for medical documentation.”

André Ljutow, Head of the Centre for Pain Medicine at the Swiss Paraplegic Centre Nottwil (SPZ) also explains: “The days of dictating on magnetic tapes is over. The changeover to digital dictation is more than just a change of medium, it changes processes.” The SPZ has been using digital dictation with speech recognition since 2011 and will soon be expanding its use in its new building.

Substantial improvements and time savings are also being achieved at the Klinikum Friedrichshafen. “Findings are available immediately after the analysis thanks to speech recognition. The use of auto-text also speeds up results and recognition accuracy is improved by using specialist vocabularies”, says Dr. Mats Wikström, Senior Physician in Radiology and Nuclear Medicine.

“The speech recognition event was a complete success. We consistently received positive feedback and we are absolutely delighted about the huge amount of interest in our solutions”, Reto Heusser, board member of Voicepoint, looks back with satisfaction.

The healthcare magazine “Clinicum” published a detailed article on our event. Read the full report here (in german).Would you like some personal advice or do you have any questions about our products? We would be happy to talk to you on the telephone. We look forward to hearing from you.