Nuance’s latest webinar delved into how speech-enabling MEDITECH with Dragon Medical One supports clinicians with creating clinical documentation, helps hospitals to drive usage of electronic patient records, increase efficiency and save time. We heard from Dr. Derek Garniss, ER Physician and Medical Director at Sault Area Hospital in Canada about the benefits that he and his team are already witnessing using this technology. We also got a taste of what’s to come, with demonstrations from Nuance experts around the role of voice navigation in the MEDITECH EPR environment and a projection of what the clinic room of the future might look like with Dragon Ambient Experience.
In March this year, Nuance hosted a webinar, which looked at the benefits of speech enabling MEDITECH with Dragon Medical One. Here are some highlights from the discussion, in case you missed it.
Dr Derek Garniss, Emergency Department Physician at Sault Area Hospital in Canada, opened up proceedings by talking about his own experience of implementing Dragon Medical One and incorporating it into the MEDITECH Expanse environment.
Sault Area Hospital provides primary, secondary and tertiary services to over 115,000 patients. Prior to implementing Dragon Medical One, its 365 clinicians mainly relied upon a hybrid system of pen and paper and backend dictation to gather patient information. Dr Garniss briefly touched upon some of the key issues the team faced when using these methods, including the legibility and quality of any information captured. To make matters worse, the wait times for reports could be up to four days each.
In order to combat these challenges, the team at Sault Area Hospital, went live with MEDITECH Expanse in 2019, implementing Dragon Medical One as speech software within the system. According to Dr Garniss, any potential concerns about implementing a new technology and the impact this might have on workflow disappeared once individuals started using Dragon Medical One. And the team hasn’t looked back since.
Boosting accuracy whilst saving time
Throughout his presentation, Dr Garniss highlighted how speech recognition in clinical documentation is enabling his team to make significant time savings, without compromising on accuracy. In fact, since the launch, clinicians at Sault Area Hospital have been particularly pleased with these two areas specifically. So pleased in fact that, despite it still being available, backend dictation at the hospital is now almost non-existent.
In order to showcase just how accurate Dragon Medical One in the MEDITECH Expanse is, Dr Garniss gave a short demonstration. Even when delivered extremely quickly, the technology recognised and recorded long passages of speech, transforming them into detailed, accurate medical notes. For the team, this has made a huge difference – especially in the Emergency Department where time is always of the essence. Dr Garniss’ also expertly demoed how AI-powered Dragon Medical One differentiates word spellings by context – watch the short clip of his CABG/cabbage test on the Nuance YouTube channel.
In the past, the need to act quickly often came at the cost of high-quality, detailed clinical documentation. Now, thanks to Dragon Medical One, clinicians can add clinical note templates with all medical terms automatically recognised in the correct context. In other words, the documentation process has become instant. All clinicians need to do is use their voice.
A voice-enabled future
Dr Garniss, explained how today’s Dragon Medical One is “totally different to the voice technologies of a decade ago.” Straight out of the box technology, with no need to programme or teach it, Dragon is built with the clinician in mind.
Following Dr Garniss’ demo the Nuance team presented a look towards the future and what is to come. Nuance showcased the use of voice navigation commands in MEDITECH – functionality that is already available in the US. Like the virtual assistants we so often use in our personal lives, Dragon Medical One can help to boost convenience in a professional setting. For clinicians this means that they can multitask – continuing to interact with their patients, without having to look at a screen to locate or document specific medical information.
Going one step further, and using ambient clinical intelligence (ACI), Nuance has created the ‘Clinic Room of the Future’ using a purpose-built healthcare device with a multi-microphone and sensor array. The webinar was rounded off with a video showing this innovative technology in action.
As Dr Garniss and his team can testify, AI-powered speech recognition is already changing the game when it comes to clinical documentation. By relieving some of the administrative burden, it is granting clinicians the gift of time and improving patient care.
Thank you to all those who attended this webinar and to our expert speakers for sharing these insights.
