The US Army has purchased Nuance Communications' Dragon Medical speech recognition software for 10,000 of its physicians.

The investment is reportedly part of Medcom's Provider Satisfaction (MAPS) programme, an initiative designed to improve interaction with AHLTA, the military's electronic health record system.

"Without speech recognition, many of us using AHLTA would spend hours more each week manually typing and mouse-clicking various boxes in order to document care. By making Dragon Medical accessible, we have enabled our physicians to complete their documentation in a much more efficient manner, with the added benefit of producing a much more narrative note," Dr Robert Bell Walker, European Regional Medical Command AHLTA consultant, told IT Examiner.

"Dragon's high accuracy rate and powerful macro functions make it even more efficient than traditional outsourced dictation. Being able to speak notes into an e-health record at the patient's bedside - rather than staring at a computer screen typing - also helps improve doctors' bedside manner and allows them to narrate more comprehensive notes while the patients are there, or right after a visit. That cuts down on mistakes caused by memory lapses and boosts the level of details that are included in a patient record," he said.


John Shagoury, president of Nuance's healthcare division, explained that the army's decision to digitise its patient records could serve as an example for the civilian medical establishment.

"President Obama's pledge for medical records to be fully digital within five years has put major pressure on the 80 per cent of doctors that have yet to migrate from paper to electronic patient records. While the Army and a budding population of physicians have succeeded in this transition, many doctors struggle because of the need to document via the keyboard and mouse," said Shagoury. "The army's utilisation of speech-enabled clinical information systems to improve physician performance, satisfaction and patient care is a model example for physicians to consider as they make the EHR transition."

Dragon Medical allows physicians to create documents, browse the web and control their PCs entirely by voice. The software encrypts all automatically saved audio files using the advanced FIPS 140-2 protocol, which ensures patient confidentiality and complies with stringent federal regulations. X