UK health provider to make savings of up to £3.9 million over five years with speech recognition, report claims.
LONDON, UK - (HealthTech Wire / News) One of the users of MediSpeech from G2 Speech, a UK health provider, will save up to £3.9 million over five years and free up 30% of medical secretaries’ time by using speech recognition, according to a report commissioned by G2 Speech.
The report, written by a large NHS acute trust, examined ways to solve a backlog of patient letters and reports caused by outdated tape equipment and a shortage of qualified medical secretaries. The Trust has 1,558 beds spread over two hospital sites.
The study concluded G2 Speech’s MediSpeech software, powered by the speech recognition engine SpeechMagic from Nuance, was better than alternative solutions like outsourced transcription services and digital dictation.
Among the benefits that prompted the NHS acute trust to pick MediSpeech were that, compared to other solutions, it can be tailored to work with any hospital information system.
Other considerations were that clinicians can easily configure MediSpeech to suit their preferred way and G2 Speech provide excellent, ongoing customer support.
“They piloted outsourced transcription and digital dictation, and found speech recognition with optional digital dictation to be the way forward,” says Henry Gallagher, Managing Director of G2 Speech UK Ltd, commenting on the report.
“There really is no contest between the ROI and improvements to workflow achievable with MediSpeech compared to outsourced transcription and digital dictation solutions. A properly implemented integrated speech recognition solution wins hands down every time. It is only when we get the opportunity to show the results to NHS Trusts that they believe in the power of speech recognition.”
“There’s also no return on investment with outsourced transcription – it’s an ongoing cost. It’s not as secure as doing the work in-house, and the Trust is reliant on the quality of work coming back – it’s got to be checked.”
MediSpeech could improve document turnaround time and tackle understaffing by improving staff efficiency, the report says.
Secretaries will receive draft documents to edit accompanied by dictation recordings boasting good quality sound. MediSpeech allows clinicians to prioritise transacription work, so the secretaries will process the reports in the correct order.
Another benefit is the security of patient data, according to Henry Gallagher.
“Patient demographic data accompanies the documents through the computer system,” he says. “It greatly reduces the likelihood of clinical error. This, plus the faster delivery of results and reports, improves patient care.”
This report is the latest in a series of studies showing the benefits of speech recognition, with optional digital dictation, in UK hospitals.
One such study, Henry says, found secretaries corrected 70 documents in ½ a day by improving workflow with speech recognition.
“The time savings and the efficiency gains are enormous. With the old way of doing it, it is not possible to do anywhere near 70 reports in half a day. You’d be lucky if you could do 20,” he says.
A study at a different hospital showed that the improved workflow due to MediSpeech allowed them to save £64,000 on postage alone.
“The knock-on effect of these small savings and the improvement in patient care is huge,” he says.
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Source: HealthTech Wire on behalf of Nuance Communications and G2 Speech.
Story highlights:
• Speech recognition selected to solve qualified staffing shortage;
• MediSpeech, software from G2 Speech, wins against outsourced transcription;
• Secretaries to gain 30% more time
