Voice Recognition for Electronic Healthcare Records Enabled

Epic electronic health record (EHR) customers can now experience voice-enabled clinical information capture through Epic Haiku for the iPhone and Canto for the iPad. The integration of Nuance Healthcare’s cloud-based voice recognition in the apps will allow users to improve the quality of patient care and increase productivity as a result of streamlined mobile clinical documentation, with less of a reliance on touchscreen keyboards.

“Clinicians’ work lives are not conducive to a desk and chair; they need the flexibility of a mobile environment to support their workflow, between exam rooms, clinics and hospitals, all at a moment’s notice,” says Janet Dillione, executive vice president and general manager with Nuance Healthcare. “Still, issues surrounding the adoption of mobile technologies remain, including limitations surrounding laborious touchscreen keyboards.”

Mobile EHR in Demand
According to a recent study by Vitera Healthcare Solutions, 9 out of 10 physicians are interested in mobile EHR solutions. Recent advancements in mobile EHRs, including voice-enabling clinical documentation and navigation, address this growing interest and provide clinicians with the same experience and functionality they’ve come to expect from their desktop EHR. With these applications, clinicians can use their voice to work more efficiently on the go, while raising the quality of patient care provided through the complete capture of the patient record.

Doctors have already begun using the apps with voice recognition. “Using voice recognition to document a note allows me to dictate the patient narrative into the electronic healthcare record using a workflow that suits my style and ensures my focus can remain on patients,” says Dr. Jeffrey Westcott, medical director of the Cardiac Catherization Lab at Swedish Medical Center.

Nuance’s cloud-based, medical voice recognition builds off of the 450,000-plus clinicians worldwide who use its “Best-in-KLAS” clinical documentation solutions on the desktop every day. By leveraging the existing desktop-focused interface, Epic customers can connect to voice recognition in the cloud. This connectivity provides maintenance-free access and automatic updates of personal speech profiles, medical vocabularies and user-defined shortcuts. Customers can also enter progress notes, histories and physical exams via voice.