From the January/February 2019 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
By Erik Westerlind
Radiology has always been an early adopter of new technology. Speech recognition is no different. Since we started seeing research come in from radiology departments about speech recognition solutions, we’ve observed that at least 80 percent of radiologists use some sort of speech recognition solution.
However, when it comes to other clinicians, those numbers drop significantly. Clinicians who use speech recognition to enable their EHRs are about 50 percent and adoption rates for pathologists and cardiologists are around 30 percent.
Before we dive into the data, it’s important to understand that Reaction Data is not an analyst or market research firm that provides some big spiel on what we think is happening. This article is meant to be a straightforward overview of the ongoing market data in our Research Cloud from healthcare professionals across the country. Every day, physicians, nurses, hospital executives, and the like, come into our Research Cloud to share their input on various topics in healthcare that are relevant to them.
Over the past two and a half years, more than 1,600 individuals have contributed their thoughts regarding the critical elements of the speech recognition market. These key decision-makers accessing the Research Cloud come from provider organizations across the country and are sharing their thoughts on how speech recognition technologies are helping them across their respective institutions. So, with that in mind, this article is meant to directly reflect their responses without analysis or opinion from us, so you get it straight from the source.
Additionally, in our most recent data across all areas, of those who are not currently using a speech recognition solution, about 40 percent indicate that they have no plans to adopt a speech recognition solution. On average, accuracy has been the largest issue cited for why they have not yet adopted one. Most are in a “wait and see” game, in the hope that accuracy and integration to their system improves before shelling out the cash.
Vendor mentions
Over the past three years, providers who use Nuance for speech recognition have been active in sharing their experience. When it comes to using speech recognition solutions for radiology reports and in documenting patient encounters in their EHR, participants who use Nuance comprise a strong majority, about 80 percent, in our Research Cloud. That number drops to 55 percent when you include the data for cardiology and pathology. The remaining participants are using (in order) M*Modal, Dolbey, IBM, nVoq, Voicebrook, Apple’s Siri, along with some homegrown solutions.
