[London, 6 June 2024] – With deep, hassle-free, integration, Augnito is enabling continued transformation in radiology and supporting key solutions that will be showcased at UKIO 2024.

Taking place from 10th-12th June 2024 in Liverpool, the UK Imaging and Oncology (UKIO) congress is where leaders from across radiology come together to share best practice, discuss trends, undertake professional development, and learn about the latest state-of-the-art equipment and technology. The 2024 event will focus on the theme of ‘Vision and Values: Putting People First’.

Thanks to robust partnerships and extensive integration with leading platforms, Augnito speech recognition from Scribetech will be present at the event for the fourth year running.

“Nothing is more important to us than elevating fields across healthcare, and radiology is a particular focus,” stated Shiraz Austin, Managing Director at Scribetech (UK) Ltd and Co-Founder of Augnito. “Augnito Spectra, our own highly convenient frontend across desktop and mobile, is part of this approach, but integration is equally important. Technology providers understand the potential of speech recognition as an accessible way for healthcare to leverage the potential of AI. Our partnerships with award-winning providers using Augnito Voice Services to speech enable their platforms is key to how, together, we can bring the benefits of speech recognition to more radiologists.”

One of the solutions carrying Augnito Voice Services embedded inside is Intelerad’s InSight PACS,  adopted by over 250 NHS and private healthcare providers across the UK and Ireland. In February 2024, InSight PACS was recognised as a 2024 Best in KLAS: Global Software Report award winner. Crucially, this award was based on feedback from the solution’s users – the people who rely on radiology reporting technology every day.

Austin stated: “Clinical system developers and cloud imaging solution providers appreciate Augnito for its API and SDK allowing them to seamlessly add Voice Services to their offering. We’ve taken one-of-a-kind speech recognition, developed in partnership with clinicians, and made it easy to integrate into any existing diagnostics and radiology reporting platform. But what drives us is the response from radiologists. People have reported significant time savings, faster reports, and increased accuracy – all these benefits lead to smoother patient journeys and better outcomes. That’s what matters.”

Augnito is also integrated into Hexarad: Radiology Technology Innovator of the Year in the M&A Today Global Awards 2024. Hexarad was also awarded the Silver HSJ Partnership Award for Diagnostics Project of the Year for its partnership with the North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust. This project led to estimated time savings of up to 80 minutes per patient. Meanwhile, teleradiologists reporting on behalf of the trust received images within 25 minutes compared to 45 minutes using the previous system.

Representatives from these leading imaging solutions award winners will be attending UKIO 2024, (Hexarad), and exhibiting (Intelerad) alongside other high profile Scribetech partners using Augnito to speech-enable their systems. Exhibitors include Aptvision Ltd – with their e-referral portal, delivering better patient outcomes and reducing workloads for medical staff, CIMAR UK Ltd – who has recently joined forces with NHS England to deliver the AI Development Platform Pilot at Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust that will then enable the deployment of AI in medical imaging across the NHS, Fujifilm Healthcare UK – has integrated Augnito into its Universal Reporting module and will be showing this at UKIO, as well as new ultrasound imaging innovations and live demonstrations on its DeepInsight AI technology, Magentus – with a new Managing Director at their UK helm and a team supporting more than 25 million imaging events each year across 700+ locations with its Cris Radiology Information System, and OpenRad Services UK Ltd – showcasing its cloud-based Augnito speech-enabled remote reporting platform that includes the functionalities of a PACS, RIS and diagnostic 3D visualisation as distinct subscription packages with secure access from anywhere and from any device.

This significant presence at UKIO reflects the continued growth of Augnito AI powered speech recognition across radiology.

Scribetech is also a member of AXREM, the UK trade association for suppliers of imaging and healthcare equipment. This gives the company insight into the current and emerging needs of radiologists and imaging professionals and helps ensure that its voice-driven AI powered and cloud based solution, Augnito, remains relevant, impactful and evolving in pace with demand.

“This will be the fourth year running, since launching Augnito technology, that it is being shown at UKIO through our partners,” added Austin. “And while Scribetech has been an approved NHS solutions provider for over two decades, we brought Augnito to the UK market as a disruptive technology because our vision was to democratise the use of speech recognition across the continuum of care. We knew Augnito provided the value advantage – a better and more cost effective way for healthcare professionals to leverage the cloud and AI, to easily transform their patient data workflows. Now, 30 months later, we’re supporting more than 2,000 UK radiologists who have switched to Augnito – through our partnerships – and many others directly. We couldn’t agree more with this year’s UKIO theme and message ‘Vision and Values: Putting People First’. The positive effect that the impact Augnito is having on radiologists, and on patient imaging and diagnostics reporting speaks for itself. ”

ENDS

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Notes to editors
All company names and product names listed in this press release are trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners.

About Scribetech (UK) Ltd and Augnito
Scribetech (UK) Ltd is a clinical solutions innovator and official distributor of Augnito products in the UK and Ireland. The company co-developed Augnito with its sister company Augnito India Private Ltd fusing 20 years of highly accurate and secure transcription and digital dictation services to the NHS, speech-to-text, and clinical coding solutions for the healthcare sector, and its own Deep Neural Network speech recognition engine with advanced voice AI technology. Augnito provides a secure, cloud-based, voice-driven AI clinical speech recognition product suite, offering 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 cost effective, seamless speech recognition to daily workflows and third-party clinical systems, quickly turning medical information into documentation that makes healthcare intelligence compliant and accessible where it is needed.

Time-saving is often the biggest promise of replacing slow transcription with smart speech recognition—and it’s not a unique claim. With an audience of overworked healthcare professionals, almost every new technology claims to drastically reduce admin time, but working faster isn’t where the real value lies.

If every healthcare professional worked faster, we’d begin to make progress on backlogs, waiting lists and bed shortages. However, this is a drop in the ocean given the chronic understaffing the NHS is facing—and the danger of speed is that it undermines the quality of care delivered. At the same time, the hours saved every day are only important if that time can be spent wisely—to listen, think carefully, and safeguard positive patient outcomes.

Speech recognition can save healthcare professionals up to an hour every single day. But what really matters is the way in which this time is repurposed to improve outcomes.

The persistent barrier of bureaucracy

There are few jobs without a seemingly endless amount of bureaucracy but, in healthcare, the stakes are higher. When you spend excess time on transcription and moving pieces of data around patient records, this is all time taken away from skilled, important work.

According to a survey from staffing app Florence, 20% of NHS and social care managers say they spend 7-8 hours on admin every day. Around 40% said this impacts patients with 30% naming documentation and record keeping specifically. Crucially, 35% feel that outdated technology causes more time wasting.

In this context, it’s only natural that many NHS trusts and private healthcare providers are turning their attention to new technology that claims to reduce admin time. However, these headline time savings aren’t always what they claim to be.

The reality of time savings and measurable value

When comparing technologies, it’s tempting to imagine a direct correlation between time and money savings. We’ve previously written about hidden costs and the challenge of measuring value but even the promise of an hour saved per person, per day, must be understood in its proper context.

A technology like speech recognition helps users reclaim an hour every day, on average. So where is this time currently being spent? With some solutions, it’s not actually time saved—it’s time that’s just moved to checking for accuracy as well as other tedious admin tasks.

From the outset, it’s easy for time savings to be displaced onto training and adoption. Unwieldy solutions may require extensive face-to-face training. In many cases, this significantly reduces the real-world time-saving you can expect. At the same time, ongoing training and support can quickly undermine efforts to work faster and more flexibly. If a user must wait for speech recognition dictionaries to be manually updated every time a new drug name appears, there’s a risk that the user will be working more slowly than ever before.

By automating transcription and documentation tasks, clinicians can save valuable time that can be redirected toward patient care. This reduces work-related stress, improves work-life balance, and influences outcomes in three key ways:
#1 More Time for Patient-Centric Care: With less admin, clinicians have more time to focus on their primary responsibility—providing patient care. This extra time at the bedside allows for better communication, addressing patient concerns, and building stronger patient-clinician relationships.
#2 Timely and Accurate Diagnoses: Accurate and comprehensive documentation supports better-informed patient-care planning, improved medication management and less error prone decision-making. When clinicians have access to detailed timely patient records, they’re able to make more accurate diagnoses and develop safer, effective, treatment plans.
#3 Enhanced Patient Satisfaction: Patients appreciate the convenience and efficiency of prompt and accurate clinical documentation and are more likely to adhere to their treatment plans and follow-up requirements. This in turn contributes to more efficient and timely patient journeys and ultimately to better care outcomes.

Similarly, a new way to capture clinical records, reports and notes is only effective if it’s closely connected to other clinical systems, reducing the risk of errors associated with manual data entry or with data (miss)-routing by systems that don’t integrate with each other. While users might be able to capture notes up to four times faster with speech compared with manual typing, or using an outsourced transcription provider, this may be limited to a given interface. It’s vital that the information captured is right first time, before it is securely sent to wherever it needs to be—from/to patient records, healthcare colleagues, or patients.

How Augnito Spectra turns time into value

Augnito Spectra delivers over 99% accurate medical speech recognition to where it’s needed. An easy-to-use, AI-powered, cloud-hosted platform that saves time compared to manual typing or transcription. What makes it unique is the way it then safeguards time savings so they can be spent improving patient outcomes.

With Augnito Spectra, users can dictate notes and reports directly into the clinical record system from any device. Data is seamlessly and securely routed to other systems as soon as it’s ready, rather than it being delayed due to manual repetitive re-entry. All with unmatched accuracy for any English accent or dialect, with no need for lengthy voice training, so every user can maximise their time savings.

Augnito Spectra is also backed by the service and support that only comes from a team with over two decades experience in delivering transcription services to the NHS. From ongoing product updates to in-app help, a guided tour, and always-available support, Augnito ensures that time isn’t just saved on digital transcription—it’s also saved every time a new feature is used or help is needed.

Learn more about Augnito

See how Augnito Spectra creates compounding time savings across every part of your daily routine. Request a demo to try Augnito Spectra for 7 days and see the benefits for yourself.

From GP surgeries to hospitals, across every department and discipline, the NHS continues to be in crisis. Backlogs aren’t getting smaller, digital transformation is slow, and waiting lists are perpetually increasing. Despite this, Trusts are reluctant to invest in smarter, faster, more flexible ways of working – and it’s easy to see why.

Historically, Trusts have been burned by technology that creates seemingly endless costs without delivering real, measurable value. What appears to be a cost-effective choice now can all-too-often spiral out of control and cost significantly more than expected. While initial investment or subscription fees are within the budget, the expense of implementation, training, and managing adoption undermine the promised value of the software or hardware.

These hidden costs are sadly common and, in some cases, woven into the business model of technology providers. But the true price isn’t just financial – it’s in how these costs affect patients.

What are the potential hidden costs of speech recognition?

Any on-premise technology comes with inevitable hidden costs. These unavoidable expenses may include infrastructure and IT changes, manual implementation and testing, procuring new devices, and ongoing management and maintenance costs, whether they involve your own IT teams or an external provider. Quickly, the per-user licence fee becomes just one part of your overall costs.

In theory, cloud-hosted technology should mark an end to hidden costs. However, the reality of this is largely dependent on the specifics of your chosen solution.

Frequently, cloud software will still require specific equipment. In the case of speech recognition, this could include specific microphones or headsets. Some providers also charge implementation and training fees in addition to your licensing costs. Even if a provider doesn’t charge these fees, you may need to invest in compatible hardware – many solutions are restricted to certain platforms and operating systems.

Finally, usability and intuitiveness play an important role in the cost of your solution. If a speech recognition solution is difficult to use, constantly inaccurate, and frustrating for your users, this creates a very real financial cost in terms of lost productivity, stressed medical professionals, and a negative impact on your patients. In part, these are the financial consequences of a ‘top down’ solution – one where the benefits to your users aren’t clear or desired, so onboarding and widespread adoption take months or even years.

How hidden costs affect practitioners and patients

The appeal of medical speech recognition is simple: improve the workload and daily routine of clinicians to improve the experience of patients.

The way people capture notes is a prime area for reinvention – and one where the benefits can be numerous. Manually typing reports, or waiting for slow secretarial manual transcription adds time to the patient journey. Checking transcription and retyping into clinical systems can slow this journey even further. The amount of time potentially wasted directly correlates to the frustration of medical professionals, the size of the backlog, and the outcomes patients can expect.

Crucially, hidden costs and complexities directly affect patients. The HSJ recently reported a Trust’s admission that ‘patients suffered harm’ due to the huge follow-ups backlog. Meanwhile, data from The Telegraph shows the number of patients waiting to start treatment in England is 7.7 million and growing. Trusts need an urgent intervention and change to ways of working and reporting. A slow, expensive implementation process only creates yet another delay – another drain on resources that takes away from positively affecting patient outcomes.

Medical speech recognition with no hidden costs

In the most objective terms, Augnito Spectra is cloud-hosted, voice-driven AI speech recognition with no hidden costs. Augnito Spectra runs on your existing desktops, tablets, smartphones and MacOS devices. It’s implemented fast with no need for on-premise infrastructure nor IT changes. And our emphasis on ease of use removes the hard-to-estimate cost of training and driving adoption. Users simply take a guided demonstration or click the solution’s own Product Tour button and get started straight away on any device they want.

At the same time, Augnito Spectra is designed to keep costs down over time. With over 99.9% accuracy for any accent and many medical specialities, Augnito eliminates the hidden costs of checking and proofing reports. And with a voice-driven AI engine, Augnito continually evolves – whether you’re adding new words like new drug names, or receiving free, constant updates as we introduce new features. You can see some of our latest updates in this short video.

Augnito Spectra delivers industry leading speech/voice recognition without hidden costs – and, as a cost-effective, intuitive to use, and accurate option, the benefits are easy to see.

Learn more about Augnito

See how Augnito Spectra is already delivering transformational value – with no hidden costs – for medical professionals across the UK. Request a demo to try Augnito Spectra for 7 days and see the benefits for yourself.