The U.S. Army Standardizes on Nuance's Dragon Medical Software to Improve Physician Productivity, Satisfaction and Quality of Patients' Medical Records

I have posted quite a bit here about Nuance and the use of the product is now expanding to with more licenses purchased for US Army Medical Department. See the related reading links below for more information. Myself, I like speech recognition for blogging! It works well on my Tablet PC too, no headset required in quiet areas! BD

With Dragon Medical Speech Recognition Software, Doctors Create Highly Accurate, Real-Time Electronic Health Records Simply By Talking, Eliminating Data Entry via the Keyboard

Thursday February 12, 2009, 8:00 am EST – Press Release

BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN - News), a leading supplier of speech solutions, today announced that the U.S. Army Medical Department (AMEDD) recently purchased Dragon Medical for 10,000 of its physicians, bringing the total number of caregivers worldwide using Dragon Medical to more than 90,000. Dragon Medical is the fastest, most accurate, real-time medical speech recognition software available to the healthcare industry.

The Army’s investment in Dragon Medical is part of MEDCOM AHLTA Provider Satisfaction (MAPS), an initiative of the U.S. Army Surgeon General to enhance clinicians’ experience with AHLTA, the military’s electronic health record system. In addition to caregiver satisfaction and efficiency, improving the delivery of healthcare to patients is at the forefront of MAPS. The Army has invested in technologies including touch-screen laptop computers, wireless networks and speech recognition software, which together provide universal access to critical information for timely and necessary correspondence tailored for each clinician and patient.

“The use of voice-recognition software with the AHLTA e-health record system is freeing doctors from several hours of typing into AHLTA their various patient notes each week,” said. Dr. Robert Bell Walker, European Regional Medical Command AHLTA consultant and a family practice physician for the military. “Being able to speak notes into an e-health record at the patient’s beside -- rather than staring at a computer screen typing -- also helps improve doctors’ bedside manner and allows them to narrate more comprehensive notes while the patients are there, or right after a visit. That cuts down on mistakes caused by memory lapses and boosts the level of details that are included in a patient record.”

As a result of Dragon Medical’s ability to enable direct dictation into electronic health records (EHR) and other clinical information systems, healthcare provider organizations can rapidly deploy the software without any customized IT integration or interface development efforts. With the proper training and associated deployment services, clinicians can be up and running within a matter of hours. Dragon Medical encrypts all automatically saved audio files using FIPS 140-2 encryption, supporting patient confidentiality and helps healthcare provider organizations comply with HIPAA regulations.

“President Obama’s pledge for medical records to be fully digital within five years has put major pressure on the 80 percent of doctors that have yet to migrate from paper to electronic patient records. While the Army and a budding population of physicians have succeeded in this transition, many doctors struggle because of the need to document via the keyboard and mouse,” said John Shagoury, President, Nuance’s Healthcare division. “The Army’s utilization of speech-enabled clinical information systems to improve physician performance, satisfaction and patient care is a model example for physicians to consider as they make the EHR transition.”

Dragon Medical lets physicians create medical documents and emails, search the Web, and control the PC and EHR entirely by voice, saving time and boosting productivity as compared to typing and mouse navigation alone. The software is being rapidly adopted and is used in hospitals and physician practices across private, public and government settings. Healthcare organizations that implement Dragon Medical real-time speech recognition can expect the following:

Faster and Easier EHR Use – Clinicians can dictate directly into an EHR system, and edit and sign medical reports, speeding data input, reducing clicking and typing and, in turn, accelerating EHR utilization.
Reduced Operating Costs – Clinicians are able to provide more detailed clinical notes than typing or EHR point-and-click templates alone, without the costs or delays associated with traditional medical transcription.
Improved Patient Care – A medical record that combines point-and-click EHR templates with dictated physician narrative promotes ongoing higher quality care, and patient documentation is available immediately for other caregivers to access electronically.
Up to a 25 Percent Gain in Clinician Efficiency – Eliminating reliance on typing allows clinicians to spend more time practicing medicine and up to 25 percent less time documenting care, when compared to using a non voice-enabled EHR.
High Recognition Accuracy – With support of more than 75 medical disciplines, Dragon Medical has proven to be up to 38 percent more accurate than non-medical speech recognition software in clinical settings.

AMEDD went live with its full suite of MAPS clinical IT solutions, including Dragon Medical, at 16 medical treatment facility sites on January 20, 2009. The deployment and training of these advanced technologies, including speech recognition software are meant to improve physician workflow within the clinical environment for optimized patient care.

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