– when they matter most
With growing waiting lists, strict government targets, and increased demand, everyone involved in diagnostics is under pressure to work faster. But efficiency and speed are also vital to improving the most important thing of all: patient outcomes.
In November 2022, NHS England announced a landmark move to speed up cancer diagnosis or all-clear for patients. For the first time, GPs across the country can access fast-track testing, with direct orders of CT scans, ultrasounds, and brain MRIs. Crucially, the availability of these tests extends to those patients whose symptoms fall outside the NICE guideline threshold for urgent referrals.
For patients, this reflects a continued effort from the NHS to accelerate pathways through the diagnosis to treatment. However, for already overloaded diagnostic teams, radiologists and pathologists, it heightens the need to transform – and accelerate – ways of working.
Early diagnosis creates better patient outcomes
According to Cancer Research UK, 4 in 10 cancer cases are diagnosed through an urgent suspected cancer referral. This creates a significant gap between the most urgent referrals and those patients with concerning symptoms who would experience a longer wait for screening.
Easier access to tests across the NHS is an important step towards better outcomes. But this also moves the potential bottleneck in diagnosis and treatment to radiologists and pathologists, now facing unprecedented demand.
More than ever, healthcare professionals need faster ways to report – without compromising accuracy and precision.
How speech recognition delivers speed, accuracy and quality
As an intuitive, natural way to create reports and transcribe information, speech recognition (SR) has the potential to dramatically accelerate how pathologists report. Compared to typing, speech is as much as five times faster.
At the same time, these speed and efficiency gains are only as meaningful as they are accurate. Increasingly, AI and machine learning mean SR can deliver accuracy beyond 99%, in any accent, with a language model developed for clinical terminology.
As a result, diagnostic teams can keep pace with the rest of the NHS as it continues its transformation to faster, more efficient and secure ways of working and delivering care.
How Augnito fast-tracks pathology workflows
The NHS is understandably focused on new ways to make frontline care and patient journeys faster. But these journeys are all interwoven – and ultimately limited – by the speed with which the departments involved in diagnosis can work.
Augnito was developed in partnership with healthcare professionals to make workflows faster and more flexible, while preserving accuracy and quality. With standalone applications or integrated into existing clinical systems, Augnito delivers the accuracy that patient outcomes depend on.
However, Augnito also empowers pathologists and radiologists to improve the way they work day-to-day. Creating reports is as easy as speaking, sharing information can be highly automated and secure, and our suite of platforms means professionals can report from anywhere.
It’s more than an alternative way to create the same reports. It’s a way to rethink how diagnosis works and dramatically improve patient care with a measurable impact on productivity and efficiency.
Finally, Augnito makes workflow transformation more available and accessible with a flexible, cost-effective approach to implementation and management. As a cloud-hosted technology, Augnito doesn’t require changes to infrastructure and IT. It’s easy to switch on and start using on any scale, with data security, compliance and management taken care of by our expert team.
Try a faster way of working
Augnito is already impacting the patient journey through our growing list of UK customers and partners. Request an evaluation version or try the Augnito app to see how you can start to benefit from faster reporting, efficient diagnostics and securely impacting the patient journey for a better continuum of care.
[London, 7 December 2022] – Supporting a widespread remit to simplify and improve patient journeys, next-gen speech recognition is empowering pathology departments to work more efficiently.
At a key stage in the diagnostic process, pathology his a vital role to play in transforming healthcare and the experience of patients. However, cloud-based speech recognition provider Augnito identifies chronic underfunding and outdated technology as major barriers to new ways of working.
“NHS waiting lists are at record highs and, unless workflows change, they’re set to stay that way. Pathology has long been identified as key to diagnostic support outcomes and a priority for digitisation — but it’s not as simple as bringing in new technology. The relationship between old and new, manual and digital, pathologist and technology need to be carefully considered.” stated Shiraz Austin, Co-Founder of Augnito.
Today, pathology is a department that often goes unseen in the depths of the hospital campus. Most pathologists use very familiar ways of working on both macroscopic and microscopic analyses, often including a large amount of repetitive, manual transcription and reporting.
Many pathologists complete these complex workflows in outdated, legacy software. However, speech recognition and automation aren’t simply a way to replace this technology. Augnito makes even older software fully speech enabled.
Austin continued: “Pathology as a department is fairly resistant to change, which is why Augnito is so compelling for this use case. With our comprehensive API and SDK (Augnito Voice Services), we can integrate best-in-class, hands-free, accurate speech recognition into an existing EPR, EMR or LIMS. It’s a way for pathology to evolve how it works, without a complex or costly period of transition.”
Augnito is a cloud-hosted, AI-powered speech recognition solution, built in partnership with medical professionals. Integrated with existing systems or used via a standalone application, web browser, or smartphone/tablet, pathologists are empowered to report from anywhere — while continuing to meet the strict requirements of structured pathology reports.
Beyond simplifying workflows and increasing reporting speed, Augnito also facilitates closer collaboration and information sharing with other departments. As a cloud-hosted platform, data can be made securely available to colleagues for the next stage of the patient journey. In this sense, Augnito brings diagnostic systems and departments together to improve efficiency, research, innovation and — most importantly — patient care.
Austin concluded: “Accuracy is core to Augnito, but agility is equally important. Through our close connections with medical professionals in pathology, radiology and beyond, we’ve been able to develop a solution that looks at the needs of healthcare holistically. We’re confident that even small changes to how people work and an increased use of speech to save time could dramatically transform patient journeys.”
END
Notes to editors
Read the full blog post here www.scribetech.co.uk/2022/11/28/the-symbiosis-of-technology-in-diagnostic-reporting-how-sr-can-enhance-pathology
For further information, interview opportunities or accompanying graphics please contact: [email protected]
About Augnito
Augnito is a secure, cloud-based, AI-driven clinical speech recognition product suite. It offers fast, easy ways to capture live clinical data on any device with 99% accuracy, support for multiple medical specialities, and no need for voice profile training. Augnito brings seamless speech recognition to daily workflows and third-party clinical systems, turning medical information into clinical documentation and making healthcare intelligence securely accessible everywhere. Augnito was developed by its parent company, Scribetech, a clinical voice solutions innovator, fusing 20 years of transcription and digital dictation services to the NHS, speech-to-text, and clinical coding solutions for the healthcare sector, and its own speech recognition engine with advanced voice AI technology.
www.scribetech.co.uk/augnito-speechrecognition