Posts Tagged Nuance

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Time Management: Jott Helps Me Translate My Thoughts Into Email

One of my secret weapons to save time and get things done efficiently is Jott. Jott Assistant is a simple way to translate my thoughts into mail using my phone.  When I think of something that I need to do, or an email I want to send to someone, I call Jott (I have it on speed dial) and record my message and it shows up in my email, or in someone else’s email at a time of my choosing.

For instance: I am driving to a clinic and suddenly remember I need the office supervisor to schedule a staff meeting next week.  I call Jott, say who it is I want to Jott, when I want the message to be sent, what the message it, and it is done.

Jott is not free, but based on the time it saves me, I think it is a very good value.  You can try it for free for a week and see if you like it, but, like most applications, it does take a while to really explore all the ways you can use it.  Jott says:

Jott turns your voicemail messages into text and delivers them as text messages and emails that are actually useful. You can forward and reply to them, screen calls when you’re in meetings, set call-back reminders and more! Set-up only takes a few minutes and Jott works with most major US carriers.

Interestingly,  as recently reported by Inga on HIStalkPractice, Nuance (owner of Dragon Naturally Speaking speech recognition programs) just acquired Jott:

a voice-to-text transcription application aimed at mobile users to create notes, use e-mail tools, and update application databases. While general cell phone users are its target audience, there certainly are healthcare possibilities there (nurses calling in vital signs to the EMR, maybe, or doing progress notes by cell phone).

Jott will interface (usually called a “mashup”) with the following tools and applications, allowing you to post to your favorite web services with your voice (Twitter, Facebook, Remember The Milk, Quicken) and listen to your RSS feed updates on the go (Yahoo, New York Times, The Huffington Post, Major League Baseball, CNet.)

Photo credit: © Theodor38 | Dreamstime.com

Posted in: Innovation

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Nuance Releases Version 10 of Dragon Medical Speech Recognition Software

David Williams has a podcast/transcripted interview with Nuance Communications’ Keith Belton on the new release of Dragon Medical.  Here’s the pertinent information straight from the interview:

  • allows physicians to navigate their EMR via speech command and to dictate anywhere in the EMR
  • 20 percent more accurate out of the box than Dragon Medical 9
  • first industrial strength version that allows a chief information officer to install it and deploy it enterprise-wide across hospitals and clinics
  • medical vocabularies that cover almost 80 specialties
  • listens to the speech of non-native speakers and automatically loads one of eight region-specific language accent models
  • new medical abbreviations wizard that presents a list of common specialty abbreviations and follows the Joint Commission guidelines on approved and unapproved expansions of abbreviations
  • can create text-based macros and text-based templates with personal variability

The list price of version 10 of Dragon Medical is $1599 per physician.  The 18% annual maintenance fee includes upgrades.  Here’s the original release notice from the Nuance website.

There remains a huge controversy over the fact that Dragon Naturally Speaking Version 10 (different from the Dragon Medical product) no longer works with EMR packages.  At about $200, Version 9 of Dragon Naturally Speaking was the choice of many physicians using EMR.

Posted in: Electronic Medical Records, Innovation

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Nuance (Dragon) Comments on Blocking the Consumer Edition from EMR Integration

©Lidian Neeleman/Dreamstime.com

©Lidian Neeleman/Dreamstime.com

My August 20th post (read it here) noted that Dragon voice recognition software has been quietly gaining acceptance as a mainstream solution to hefty transcription costs and EMR integration. 10% of the healthcare providers in the United States are currently using Dragon Medical.

Yesterday, HISTalk noted that:

At least one doc is unhappy that Nuance has blocked the use of Dragon Naturally Speaking with EMRs in Version 10. Nuance states “…we found that some large hospitals were using the consumer editions of Dragon and not getting the accuracy, quality and manageability that would be achieved when using Dragon Medical.”

Nuance responded on HISTalk via comment, saying in part:

“Nuance has made a significant investment in building, tuning and distributing Dragon Medical for exclusive use by the health care industry. The integration and engineering required to deliver the ease-of-use of Dragon Medical with all major EMR vendors, including Allscripts„¢, Epic, Misys®, GE® Healthcare, NextGen®, Siemens, eClinicalWorks, Meditech, McKesson®, Cerner and Eclipsys®, requires a Herculean effort, comprising thousands of man hours in developing and testing. As one would expect, there is a premium associated with the delivery of this capability and the resources devoted to further hone and evolve the product to meet the specific needs of the medical end user.”

Nuance also points to the Microsoft model of charging differently for enterprise/professional software and consumer software offerings.

I don’t dispute a vendor’s right to charge accordingly for a product that has taken a lot of R & D to bring to the market, but like everything else that has a place in the medical world, it will cost much more based on the healthcare application. A set of plastic drawers for home costs $9.99 at your local store and lists for $99.99 in a medical catalog.

Posted in: Electronic Medical Records, Innovation

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