The entry of Siri for the iPhone (News - Alert) 4S powered by Nuance speech technology marked an upgrade of speech recognition software in the industry. Today, its use is more widespread, and the healthcare segment of Nuance (News - Alert) is seeing an increase in mobile speech-driven solutions as more physicians resort to using electronic health records (EHRs) via mobile apps.
"Nuance has seen a five-fold increase in the number of mobile speech users in just the last three months as providers respond to the major EHR vendor solutions hitting the market," said Jonathon Dreyer, director of cloud and mobile speech solutions marketing, Nuance Communications (News - Alert).
This exodus toward mobile speech-driven EHR solutions can easily be explained.
Over the years, the healthcare setting has been radically transformed by cloud computing and the deployment of cloud-based solutions; it became necessary that technology had to keep pace. Nuance Healthcare entered the scene with its secure, cloud-based, medical speech recognition solutions embedded into Epic’s Haiku for the iPhone and Canto for the iPad.
Both these mobile applications provide authorized clinical users of Epic's EHR with secure access to clinic schedules, hospital patient lists, health summaries, test results and notes, as well as supporting dictation and in-basket access. Physicians grabbed the mobile opportunity with both hands.
"The integration of Nuance and Epic untethers physicians from the desktop allowing them mobility. Doctors will no longer need to find an unoccupied computer to write their clinical note," said Jeremy Bernstein, chief technology officer, UC San Diego Health System, a Nuance customer.
With voice-enabled clinical information captured from these iOS mobile applications, physicians had access to the same functionality as they had with desktop EHRs, but now had the chance to complete clinical documentation on-the-go, equally efficiently and in less time. It allowed conversational dialogs using speech-to-text, text-to-speech, voice navigation, and auto-texts. The anytime, anywhere, any-device concept suited them well.
And, with a near ubiquitous user interface, Nuance’s mobile speech-driven solutions are easy to use and provide a seamless, secure experience, easily connecting to other Nuance cloud solutions.
Serious competition for Google (News
- Alert) Glass? You just never know.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson