[London, 29 September 2022] Speech recognition has provided efficiency benefits to the health profession for decades, but can the integration of this vital tool into clinical systems and into radiology work processes further boost performance? Shiraz Austin, co-founder of Augnito, a voice-AI technology company, takes a deep dive into the integration benefits of clinical speech-enabled solutions.
Speech recognition as a mature technology has evolved over the years. Today it has the potential to redefine radiology, bringing new levels of accuracy, quality, speed and security. However, maximising these performance gains requires a measured approach to integrating voice-AI driven solutions and radiologists’ working processes.
Shiraz Austin, Co-Founder of Augnito notes, “The most impactful solution is one that’s deeply integrated, bringing the best possible speech recognition (SR) engine to existing PACS/RIS workflows. In the last two years, work processes have been required to be more flexible than ever, and to be delivered remotely, or, from wherever consultants find themselves. Add to this the unprecedented pressure that the pandemic created across the NHS – with resources strained beyond their limit – and it’s no surprise that health-tech solutions, including SR are needed, and they need to deliver more than user-efficiency gains. To have the greatest impact, they need to perform seamlessly, securely and accurately at a range of different locations.”
Selecting the right speech recognition solution to deliver a seamless experience on any device to allow radiologists to work without limitations, comes down to integration, which will also need to be efficient in itself.
Shiraz continues, “Considerations into hardware, connectivity, data security, user requirements system operating platforms, IT resource availability, costs and ultimately ROI across a site, help to draw up a solution needs check-list. In many cases a legacy product will be in place which no longer supports the growing needs of a Trust, thus a ‘usability vs. new deployment’ review is essential to analyse performance and savings that could be gained with switching solutions. With a clear improvements scope, integration of the right solution into an existing clinical system with minimum or no disruption and flexible reporting processes can boost the desired user benefits, reduce backlogs, support better workflows and save money.”
The latest in voice-AI driven speech recognition, Augnito, offers a cloud-hosted product that’s already supported on multiple devices, and integration to clinical systems via its API and SDK. As a result, radiologists can benefit from integrated speech recognition and clinical word processing within their reporting tools, securely and accurately, wherever they need to without disruption.
Augnito is transforming speech recognition to meet the evolving needs of clinicians, by understanding the challenges of today, and offering a flexible solution and ROI to support the future of healthcare.
ENDS
Read the full blog here https://www.scribetech.co.uk/2022/09/26/how-integrated-speech-drives-radiologists-performance/
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 specialties, 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
[London, 28 April 2022] – During the last two COVID-19 pandemic years, 63% of radiographers reported an increase in their workplace-related stress levels due to a combination of demand, low capacity, major changes to routine departmental protocols and redeployment. However, according to Scribetech (UK) Ltd, a clinical voice-AI solution and disruptive technology provider, the strain the discipline is under was already reaching breaking point prior to the pandemic – and now more than ever – solutions are required to bring back confidence in the profession.
The CQC’s 2018 Radiology Review, which measured slow reporting times across the NHS, already highlighted then, a backlog of 33,400 unreported images at one Foundation Trust alone, despite attempts to recruit more radiologists and reverting to the use of outsourced support at great expense.
Both in that same year and in 2020, the Clinical Radiology UK Workforce Census Reports highlighted a severe lack of radiology consultants. Three quarters of radiology clinical directors didn’t feel they had enough radiology consultants to deliver safe patient care in the working environment. In addition, the 2020 report also found that while Trusts moved to remote/home and hybrid ways of working, this came with an additional set of issues and risk for radiologists and radiology reporting, owing to an increase in IT and technological challenges. Even where the most forward thinking Trusts had already embraced voice/speech recognition applications, few were equipped to make these available for remote access and efficient in connectivity. As a result, most radiologists reverted back to typing their reports or sending audio files for manual transcription.
Shiraz Austin, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Scribetech, stated: “Efforts to improve radiology across the NHS are emerging. The UK Treasury’s 2020 Spending Review earmarked £325 million for investment in new diagnostic imaging equipment. However, radiology remains critically understaffed – by as much as 33% and forecast to increase to 44% by 2025.”
With rising demand for radiology year-on-year, adding more equipment and more staff simply isn’t enough. Existing radiologists need support to work efficiently and accurately today – without adding technology challenges and compromising on attention to detail and risking reporting errors or mistakes.
“In part, replacing outdated equipment and improving connectivity to clinical systems will help reduce errors, drive accuracy and improve patient outcomes. Technology beyond imaging equipment also has an important role to play in helping radiologists feed accurate information into the diagnostics process; cloud-based solutions are the key” added Austin.
Radiology Information Systems (RIS) and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) are undergoing a transformation. Innovations like speech recognition are helping radiologists interpret and report on images faster. And, crucially, they are designed to preserve accuracy in a way that simply wasn’t possible a decade ago. Meanwhile, NHS Trusts are moving toward a Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) – a way to store medical images in a standard format and make them accessible to professionals across a range of systems.
“In recent years, speech recognition (SR) solutions have advanced significantly. With SR the radiologist can dictate the case, edit it (if necessary), and complete the report all at once, which makes the final file available almost immediately. In turn, the clinician can review this report sooner than would have been possible in the traditional reporting method. This leads to better patient care, since they [the patient] can move onto the next step in their workup and diagnosis, or begin treatment sooner.”
“It also leads to a more accurate and informed report as it’s completed while the radiologist is reviewing the images, before details and notes of the case might be forgotten. Plus, there’s less chance of the report getting misfiled or lost in the system. One final consideration is that this type of speech-enabled radiology reporting process can lead to a more satisfied referring clinician, since each report is available sooner, as well as a more satisfied radiologist, due to a sense of completion in knowing that each report will not have to be reviewed again.”
“With reports instantly transcribed and fed into clinical systems, AI driven cloud-based SR solutions such as Augnito, can significantly reduce the burden on radiologists even more. Many users report time savings, but what radiologists really need is secure technology they can feel confident about, knowing that its level of accuracy is such that it is “right first time” – a way to guarantee that information is not only fast to capture, but accurate to the highest standards,” concluded Austin.