With almost 20 years of practical experience deploying speech recognition technology in the healthcare arena, I believe the current reality is that cloud-based healthcare speech recognition is here and viable with SayIt from nVoq. It offers freedom from hardware considerations, resolving ‘sync’ issues with multiple locations, simplifying deployment, and eliminating technical overhead.
We anticipate SayIt will gain rapid acceptance with individual providers, multi-location/multi-specialty groups, and large hospital systems since many users can benefit from its features and portability. Perhaps one of the most compelling usage scenarios is public hospitals, which are often under-resourced from the standpoints of both available capital and technical personnel support.
Because SayIt provides an easy-to-use speech recognition interface that’s accessible from any Windows or Mac OS-based computer with a sound system and broadband Internet access, users don’t need to replace existing hardware to put speech recognition in place. The technology is cloud-based, so there’s very little technical overhead associated with implementation. This means public hospitals can implement state-of-the-art speech recognition technology that eases the transition to and daily use of electronic medical records (EMRs) while avoiding the need to allocate limited funds to replace hardware, hire or train new personnel, or manage the installation. In fact, Next Generation Technologies, Inc. can provide complete program management for our clients’ SayIt technology without any complicating network security or access issues.
With SayIt, users can leverage highly accurate, real-time transcription with virtually any EMR. And it’s simple to learn—most providers are using SayIt successfully within their EMR just a few hours after their initial training session. They can also create easy-to-use shortcuts that allow them to use voice commands to insert blocks of text and automate activities in their EMR with a minimal amount of effort.
The SayIt pricing model is subscription-based, which offers the advantages of minimal upfront costs, low total cost of ownership (TCO) and easy reassignment of accounts as personnel come and go from the hospital and clinic staff.
About Edward S. Rosenthal
Edward S. Rosenthal has been President and CEO of Next Generation Technologies, Inc. since 1997. Headquartered in Lynnwood (Seattle), Washington, NGT, Inc. has maintained a primary focus on the practical aspects of implementing speech recognition technologies. Consulting with a broad range of healthcare clients, NGT, Inc. is a certified nVoq SayIt reseller.