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Queensland hospital cuts reporting time with speech recognition

Software reduces human error

Nambour General Hospital on Queensland's Sunshine Coast has cut average report turnaround times by 28 hours and reduced the time needed to create radiology reports by 85 per cent thanks to the deployment of speech recognition software.

Director of medical imaging services at Nambour, David Ward, said the hospital deployed the technology due to a shortage of radiologists and long waiting times for simple reports to be compiled.

“Public radiology in Queensland is faced with a shortage of Radiologists to do the reporting; which had led to significant delays in our report turnaround times. In the past, some reports would take six to seven days to be produced,” Ward said.

Thanks to the deployment of the software, an average report no longer takes 33 hours to complete, and is instead completed in five hours. Ward said a backlog of reports has also been minimised.

“Previously the transcriptionists were constantly fighting with a backlog of audio files waiting to be typed. Thanks to an integrated workflow and speech recognition our transcriptionists are much happier people,” Ward said.

Soliton IT, the workflow solution used in the rollout, uses Nuance speech recognition software and has reduced the error of margin by transcriptionists.

“With the solution, Soliton IT sees the image, report and patient file as a single unit, minimising the risks of mixing them up through human error,” Ward said.

The deployment at Nambour General Hospital has expanded into the radiology departments in Caloundra and Gympie.

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