The Use of Voice-Recognition for Electronic Medical Records – A Personal Experience
Wei-Hua Kuo · 2009
Abstract The advent of PC-based voice-recognition software for medical dictation began over 10 years ago. In those early days, due to the limitations of computer speed and memory, the learning curve was steep and adaptation was limited. The "training period" was measured in weeks and there were professional one-on-one trainers to teach the use of voice recognition for dictation purposes. Despite such great efforts, the error rates were high and a great deal of time was needed to correct errors by voice commands or keyboard entry. The voice-recognition medical records dictation system fell short of expectation, until recently. Nowadays, commercial voice-recognition software has made tremendous strides, taking advantage of the increased processing speed of parallel computing and vast memory size – Moore's Law at work. It is now feasible to setup a low cost medical dictation system, and get it to work in days. The learning curve is much abbreviated and with improved accuracy. Nevertheless, dictating into a voice recognition system requires the user to speak into the microphone clearly and distinctly, at a pre-determined pace. Although such speech cadence appears artificial, it is not difficult to get accustomed to and is not an impediment to its use. The voice-recognition software is also capable of acting as a voice-activated system to control computer functions, such as selecting desktop icons, opening and closing menus, and switching between open windows. Moreover, the system has a self-learning capability: When a user corrects an error with either keyboard strokes or voice commands, the software recognizes the error and will improve its accuracy next time.