Six years later, the pilot program is still a pilot, with six regular users at the VA in Los Angeles. It’s a matter sometimes of the small learning curve and trying some new technology. I use Dragon, doing now for this post!
Also mentioned here is developing “user interest” so hopefully this post might do some of that. You don’t know until you try and then one might wonder, what took me so long? One more example of speech technology making it’s place in healthcare. BD
Using voice-recognition software with electronic medical records could save a Veterans Affairs Department facility in Los Angeles hundreds 
of thousands of dollars per year in transcription costs, according to one physician advocate. And yet, only a handful of employees at the VA’s West Los Angeles Healthcare Center use the technology.
Meanwhile, a VA network in Tennessee has a 750-user license for voice-recognition software and has managed to fill most of those slots.
At VA’s West Los Angeles facility, Dr. Steve Zeitzew, an orthopedic surgeon, has been advocating for voice-recognition software for eight years. It took him two years to get administrators to agree to a pilot program, and that happened only after a cardiologist complained to the medical executive committee that his emergency notes were not being transcribed in a timely manner.
“The real key with [voice-recognition] technology is that you can’t impose it on people,” Zeitzew said. “You need to develop user interest.”
You also need to provide the right kind of hardware, such as high-quality sound cards and microphones, and technical support to set up the software correctly, he added.
http://www.govhealthit.com/print/4_22/news/350627-1.html?GHITNL=yes
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I wonder if the Dragon is blocking the the use of VA's VISTA EMR with Dragon Preferred v10, as the do with commercial EMRs.
ReplyDeleteI would think that a government entity like the VA would not look kindly to a maneuver like that.
Perhaps they can scavenge Dragon version 9 or 9.5 from eBay like the rest of us.
That is probably a very good question or they may still have the old version in place.
ReplyDeleteI might guess it could be possible to have the service running off a server too, just a guess.