Using Speech Recognition in Medical Transcription

A growing number of medical providers send their dictation to medical transcribers via digital voice files (speech recognition technology or SRT). Though speech recognition software has been around for a number of years, it is still a fairly new technology, and the software must be "trained" or programmed to the user's voice and tonal type. Dictation is read into the software and the program continuously "learns" the spoken words and phrases.

This can make transcribing simpler or more difficult. Poor speech habits, heavy foreign accents and mumbling can make it more difficult for the software to process and recognize the transcriber's voice, or take longer to learn.  It is important in the learning of speech recognition to not vary the way you speak, and to "teach" the software often. The more you speak to it and do the lessons that are programmed within the software, the quicker it will learn your speech type.

Try to speak as clearly as you can, pronouncing words consistently; recognition software will not understand tone of voice. Once it learns a particular word, if a non-learned word is stated in the same manner as the learned word, the software will type the learned word rather than the one spoken. This can result in a mish-mash of unintelligible words. Read each sentence as it is typed on the screen to be sure the wrong word is not translated onto the document. If it is, remember to "teach" that word to the software.

Thresholds can be set to reject a bad report and return it for standard dictation, but these settings are arbitrary. Each software is not created equal, however. Some are better than others and have a higher rate of learning success.

When transcribing from a speech recognition software audio file, remember that it isn't perfect and that you will have to analyze what you are transcribing to make some sense of it. You may have to refer back to written notes to help you. And you'll have to figure out from context sometimes what a particular dictation report is supposed to say. Don't get frustrated. It's just a part of the medical transcription job.