Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4 - New Release

Nuance Communications, Inc. announced the release of Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4 on 22nd January 2018, the latest locally installed version of Nuance’s industry-leading clinical speech recognition solution for smaller practices. Through deep learning technology and sophisticated acoustic models, Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4 puts Nuance’s leading artificial intelligence (AI)-powered technology in the hands of busy clinicians in independent practices. Increased documentation efficiency allows for more time with patients, improved quality to better inform care teams and staff, decreased turnaround time and increased cost savings.

Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4 is an easy-to-install, easy-to-use documentation solution that enables enhanced clinician productivity within practices of 24 clinicians or fewer though quick creation of accurate patient notes to help keep pace with patient loads and better manage practice throughput. Distinct from non-medical speech recognition solutions, this latest edition combines state-of-the-art speech recognition technology with 90 medical vocabularies and sophisticated acoustic models to yield 99 percent accuracy out-of-the-box, with no need for voice profile training.

In addition to a streamlined setup, Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4 offers contextual guidance and productivity tips tailored to clinician usage that helps accelerate proficiency and discover advanced features. Its deep learning technology continuously learns and adapts to voice and environmental variations, helping automatically refine performance. These capabilities are especially helpful in addressing the unique challenges facing smaller ambulatory clinics, such as administrative overload, revenue pressures and regulation demands.

“The outstanding performance of Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4 is a culmination of decades of Nuance’s innovation in AI,” said Michael Clark, senior vice president and general manager of Nuance Healthcare Provider Solutions. “By applying machine learning to real-time document capture, we are helping address the challenges of smaller ambulatory clinics to transform the documentation process, and improve both the clinician experience and patient care.”

Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4 allows healthcare providers to create narrative documentation directly in EHR fields three times faster and more accurately than ever before. Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4 allows clinicians to spend less time documenting and more time with patients, all while decreasing documentation costs and driving appropriate reimbursement.

“With state-of-the-art documentation technology designed for healthcare professionals, Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4 brings AI to smaller clinics at an affordable price,” said Mike Whalen, Executive Vice President of eDist Business, a leading wholesale distributor of speech recognition solutions for healthcare and other industries. “It will bring improved accuracy and functionality to our market as well as improved clinician productivity, EHR adoption and documentation quality. The significant financial benefits are critical to practice viability.”

The latest version of Dragon Medical Practice Edition also delivers:

• Greater mobility – Compatibility with Windows 10 touchscreen devices provides clinicians with the ability to document on-the-go. Hybrid touch and keyboard interaction also work together seamlessly for controlling multiple features.
• Enhanced usability – The newly designed DragonBar provides easy access to popular capabilities and automatically collapses when not in use freeing up screen space.
• Powerful voice capabilities – Clinicians can use simple voice commands to interact with select web-based applications and websites, generate text within applications and EHR textbox fields, or use the Dragon dictation box to compose content.

We are committed to helping clinicians provide their best patient care and helping healthcare organizations improve the way they capture and communicate the patient story.

Pricing for Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4 and confirmation of when we can start shipping this new version will follow shortly. For more information about Dragon Medical solutions for clinicians, please get in touch with us via our contact page.

Merry Christmas!

All of the staff at Freedom of Speech Ltd would like to wish all of our clients, suppliers & ATW assessors a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

---

The intelligent and flexible USB microphone

Olympus recently released their new range of hand-held microphones called the “RecMic II series”. 

The RecMic II Series is created to cater to the highest demands of professionals who want the best usability and results with any speech-to-text solution. All devices also come with an extra smooth UV-coating and silent buttons to reduce disturbing touch noises. The antimicrobial surface meets hygienic requirements, especially in medical areas.

View fullsize

Product highlights include:

• Trackball with smart Cursor Motion - Faster Cursor Navigation & Mouse Control – The integrated trackball allows control of your mouse cursor while dictating.
• Closed Loudspeaker Chassis - Thanks to this Clever Construction, the speaker generates enough volume with good sound quality even from the smaller opening of the body.
• Triple-Layer Sound Studio Pop-Filter - Best Results With Speech Recognition – The construction blocks the wind noise of the mouth when talking into the microphones and ensures that no pop-noises are recorded.
• Antimicrobial Surface - Effective Against Microbes – The antimicrobial materials in the surface of the devices effectively protect against microbes.
• Microphone Stand with automatic Stand Detection - Smart Microphone Stand – The dedicated microphone stand allows you hands-free dictation, while operating with other instruments. The RecMic II automatically switches to wide directional between hands-free and classic dictation, without the need to alter microphone.
• HID Keyboard Mode - Full Compatibility – The user can select between three different modes, which are operating in a standard HID-Keyboard mode. Two are pre-defined button settings either for Dragon or Windows Speech Recognition and the third is fully customizable via the Olympus RecMic Configuration Tool (RCT).

For further information and pricing, get in touch with us via our contact page

---

Join our Team - AT Trainer required

Due to our recent business expansion, we are looking for a new member of staff to join our team. Details are below.

Assistive Technology & Dyslexia Strategy Trainer

Freedom of Speech Ltd have a collective experience of over 40 years installing, training and supporting speech recognition solutions & assistive technology for a wide variety of companies across the UK who want to improve their document turnaround time, staff efficiency or to enable disabled staff to operate a PC efficiently. We also provide one-to-one tuition and assistance to clients with learning disabilities such as dyslexia and dyspraxia. Areas in which we may assist them include teaching organisational skills, memory strategies, time management, planning work schedules, literacy skills / reading skills / writing skills, confidence building & computer skills.

We are looking for an Assistive Technology & Dyslexia Strategy Trainer to join our team.

As an Assistive Technology  Trainer you will be responsible for providing one to one (and group) assistive technology training (mainly in Dragon NaturallySpeaking and Texthelp Read and Write) to our clients based around the UK (mainly in locations north of London and in the Midlands region).

Experience has shown us that good communication skills and the ability to adapt to any situation are paramount to being a proficient software trainer.

Have you any experience in training or teaching?  Ideally the candidate would have experience in basic Windows applications. This role would suit a motivated, professional person with good organisational skills and a calm manner. A person who enjoys a busy and proactive work environment.

Full product training and support will be offered to the successful candidate.

Skills required
Desire working knowledge of MS Office (Word, Excel & Outlook) together with a good telephone manner and confident/friendly communication skills.

Assistive technology software knowledge/training experience including Dragon NaturallySpeaking (speech recognition solutions), Read and Write (text-to-speech solutions) and SparkSpace (mind mapping solutions).

As a Dyslexia Strategy Trainer you will be responsible for providing one to one sessions concentrating on the client’s specific needs, with the aim of removing any necessary barriers to learning and enhance their strengths. You will determine the clients individual learning needs & teach them in a way that they can learn from.

Skills required
Recognised professional dyslexia training qualification in providing training courses for learners with specific learning difficulties. Experience in the creation and delivery of user-specific programmes of one-to-one tuition to students with specific learning difficulties.

Job package
We are looking to offer a good salary (dependant on experience), company car allowance & private healthcare insurance. Additional benefits include laptop, mobile phone, satellite navigation & company/travel expenses.

Working week
Working hours: Monday to Friday, 9.00am - 5.00pm (some earlier starting/ending times may be required dependant on training bookings and client location). You will travel from your home to each client but will be expected to attend occasional meetings at our head office in Worthing, West Sussex.

If you are interested in this challenging new role, send us your CV (via post or e-mail), your current salary and confirmation that you have a full, clean driving license to: Gary May (garymay@freedomofspeech.co.uk)

---

Nuance Announces Enhancements to Dragon Professional Group

Dragon Professional Group Offers Simplified Distribution and Management of Speech Recognition across enterprises to boost documentation accuracy, productivity, improve workflows and costs

Nuance Communications, Inc. has announced the UK English language availability of the latest version of Dragon Professional Group (version 15), its enterprise-ready speech recognition solution for professionals across multiple industries. Empowering high-quality documentation faster and more efficiently by voice, while also saving businesses time and money, Dragon Professional Group enables fast, efficient and accurate dictation of documentation, as well as robust transcription and powerful customisation features. It helps organisations gain competitive advantage by unlocking the productivity and efficiency benefits that are inherent in Nuance document productivity solutions powered by speech recognition technology.

Dragon Professional Group can be deployed quickly and effectively to drive professional productivity across an organisation of any size, helping busy professionals reduce the time spent on administrative tasks and documentation, minimise or eliminate reliance on outsourced transcription services, while improving employee productivity to achieve significant time and cost savings across the business. By deploying Dragon Professional Group, enterprises can benefit from:

• Fast and accurate dictation, which boosts employee productivity by being faster than manually typing
• High recognition accuracy for more users with the ability to learn and adapt to a variety of accents and environments, as a result of next-generation speech engine powered by Nuance Deep Learning technology
• Powerful transcription tools to eliminate transcription bottlenecks, cut reliance on outsourced services and reallocate support staff to more high-value, billable tasks
• Custom voice commands to automate repetitive tasks and increase efficiencies across a workgroup or department
• Ability to work quickly and accurately by voice within the latest business applications
• Minimising post-editing with formatting and other recognition improvements to speed document turnaround

“Although accurate and timely documentation is a critical task for a number of organisations across a wide range of industries – from financial institutions to social services organisations, and more – it can be a major pain point, as it more than often decreases the amount of time that professionals have to focus on their main job responsibilities, and can have a ripple effect across workgroups and teams,” said Mark Geremia, Vice President, General Manager of Dragon, Nuance. “Dragon Professional Group effectively addresses this pain point by allowing professionals to utilise advanced speech recognition and robust voice command capabilities to create detailed and accurate documentation – whether in or out of the office.”

Centralised administration is provided through the Nuance Management Center (NMC) for significant cost savings. NMC also enables enterprises to track employee usage of Dragon Professional Group, reassign licenses based on employee use, and manage or share customisations, including custom words, commands and auto-texts, across multiple Dragon users. Combined, Dragon Professional Group and Nuance Management Center provide a powerful productivity solution, enabling corporations to work smarter and more efficiently for bottom-line impact.

The introduction of Dragon Professional Group comes 20 years after the Dragon family was announced. Through a program of continuous investment and research, Dragon has consistently set the standard for excellence in desktop speech recognition solutions, bringing productivity and accessibility benefits to legions of users globally. You can read more about Dragon’s evolution here

Dragon Professional Group 15 is now available in UK English for PC users. Please contact us for more information and pricing.

---

Key challenges of patient documentation

---

How speech recognition can save GPs up to two hours per day

Ulrike Oswald (Digital Marketing & Content Strategy Manager - Nuance Healthcare Solutions Marketing) created a blog post last year we wanted to share with you. Her insights into the current state of GP practices and discussion with a GP is below.

"GP practices are clearly busier than they have ever been and it’s not just the GPs who bear the brunt. Practice secretaries, administration staff and practice managers are all under pressure. 

I was recently in conversation with Dr. Ivan Camphor, Senior Partner at Heatherlands Medical Centre in Wirral about workload. It didn’t take long for him to mention research from the Universities of Oxford and Bristol published in The Lancet which found that workloads in general practice have increased by 16 per cent over the past seven years.  

The BMA's Urgent Prescription for General Practice calls for a safe manageable workload and more time with patients. NHS England has recognised the need for action to address GPs' workload with a three-year £30m 'Time to Care' development programme, which will support the release of up to 10% of the GPs' time.

So what does this pressure feel like for the practicing GP? 

During our conversation I received confirmation of what is no news to any GP:  he was constantly being bombarded by letters, lab reports and NHS eReferrals. However, this practice has found a solution which he says he could no longer do without. Dr. Camphor is using speech recognition software and the benefits are clear.

The power of speech recognition technology      

NHS eReferrals are done while the patient is with him in consultation – using a microphone to speak directly into the practice system (EMIS Web). Patients can add information there and then. He says they walk away having had a good consultation. They know that not only has the referral been done, but all the information they wanted to include has been captured. It also means this practice is meeting the requirement to make full and contemporaneous records.

This GP also uses it for administration tasks such as filling in common templates for insurance reports and also alongside his Outlook to send and receive emails. In fact his practice work is so much easier that he looks forward to working with it because of the significant difference it has made.

So, what are the benefits of using speech to text technology?

Perhaps the single most important benefit is the time that is saved by using speech recognition software and this in turn has reduced his stress levels. In the case of Dr. Camphor he estimated that it saves around two minutes for every 10 minutes of consultation. The time saving comes from turning a time consuming exercise such as recording blood pressure into one that takes seconds. All he has to do is simply say “check BP” and the system brings up a Read code box ready for the entry to be added by voice. In a ten hour day this time saving equates to two hours. This means he can turn his attention towards the patient and it becomes much more of a holistic consultation. 

Spend more time on patients

As well as helping to ensure additional patient information is recorded to maximise Quality and Outcome Framework (QOF) points, it also means he requires less support from secretarial staff. Although my discussion partner acknowledges moving away from traditional tasks was not easy to begin with, the practice’s secretarial staff now have more time to help out with calls and recalls for patient appointments as well as other administrative tasks around chronic disease management.

It is easy to get started

Having used the software myself I can also agree about one further aspect – it is fast and easy to install. Yes, you have to train it up, but once you have done this it becomes easy to use and above all is accurate. So it’s good to have found another convert to this better way of working."

Want to know more? Contact us by clicking here.

---