April 2004

Integrating digital voice dictation with on-screen diagnosis

What is it?
When the radiologist decides to diagnose a patient study, he or she may either scan a barcode from the request form or click on the name of the patient on his/her worklist. The digital dictation system then automatically starts a new recording for the given patient and study, and the images are automatically laid out on the screen(s) of the radiologist. When the diagnosis is done, the radiologist uses the "end of reporting" button on his/her microphone. The digital voice report is then sent along for correction as the images disappear and the radiologist is given the possibility to enter a quick note to be digitally saved with the images. The study's reporting status then changes to "done" in the PACS database.

What is the benefit?
This system makes it possible to immediately see the status of a study and hence avoid double reporting of the same studies. The time saved by the radiologist is quite significant. The synchronization of different software packages on the radiologist PC avoids double typing for patient names and makes the whole process cleaner for correct patient identification. In this integrated environment, the specialist may maximize his/her time on diagnosis and keep manual PC typing to a minimum.

What is a good example of that?
Such an integration was implemented at the St-Andries Hospital in Tielt with the voice recognition solution from the company G2Speech.