Documentation capture

How Nuance Dragon Medical is supporting the UK NHS during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Nuance speech recognition solutions supporting clinicians in the UK NHS

Take a look at how Nuance speech recognition solutions are helping NHS hospitals safeguard their workforce during these challenging times by: supporting remote working, minimising infection risks and reducing the workloads associated with completing clinical documentation. Nuance has also published a COVID-19 content pack providing patient documentation templates, which are free for all Dragon Medical customers in the United Kingdom.

As Dr Simon Wallace described in his latest blog; digital technology is playing a crucial role in supporting the UK National Health Service (NHS) during the COVID-19 pandemic.  The NHS is quickly developing digital strategies in response to the pandemic and speech recognition solutions are increasingly a key component of these plans.

By utilising front-end speech recognition, clinicians can use their voice to securely document patient care directly into the Electronic Patient Record (EPR).  We speak three times faster than we type and, with an AI-powered speech recognition solution such as Nuance Dragon Medical One, it is an accurate, rapid and efficient way to capture the complete patient story in the EPR.

In addition to efficiency savings, Dragon Medical One is helping NHS hospital trusts to minimise infection risk during the COVID-19 pandemic.  This was recently highlighted in Health Tech Newspaper (HTN) by Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS FT where they are using Nuance’s Dragon Medical One with their mobile app, PowerMic Mobile, in high risk areas.  Within these high-risk areas, AI powered mobile speech recognition is enabling frontline staff to view and enter notes directly in the EPR without having to remove any of their personal protective equipment.

The HTN also recently published an article looking at how Cornwall IT Services, working with the teams at NHS Kernow CCG, Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust, are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Under ‘next steps’ Cornwall have highlighted the recent upgrade of their voice recognition system (with Nuance) and how this will improve their clinical documentation processes.

Outside of hospitals, speech recognition software is also playing an increasingly important role in supporting healthcare professionals during the pandemic.  With the UK on lockdown, more primary care doctors and allied health professionals, such as radiographers and physiotherapists, are working from home.  Here at Nuance, we are seeing a growing number of enquiries from healthcare professionals looking to utilise Dragon Medical One from home and, as a secure cloud-based solution, it can be very easily installed remotely.

Nuance has taken further steps to support Dragon Medical customers during the pandemic and we are working directly with our NHS hospital trust customers to offer additional support during these challenging times.  We have also published a COVID-19 content pack with easy-to-use templates for capturing crucial datapoints for COVID-19 patients.  These free documentation templates are available for all Nuance Dragon Medical users in the UK, please click here for more information.