Motivated by the need for greater workflow efficiency, speech recognition and reporting technologies are steadily morphing from merely complementary "nice-to-have" toys into "must-have" tools for radiologists and physicians.
In fact, a primary theme emerging in speech recognition and reporting this year is that the product category seems to be following the path blazed by PACS during the past few years: integration. You'll notice as you traverse the halls of McCormick Place that many of the vendors marketing speech recognition and reporting products will be emphasizing "seamless" integration with other products they offer, as well as with various software packages and systems from other companies.
A series of corporate acquisitions sparked the speech recognition market segment in 2008, with the most recent representing the largest -- Nuance Communications' acquisition of Philips Speech Recognition Systems, which markets the SpeechMagic engine that a number of companies include in their own portfolios.
The Nuance-Philips deal in October was preceded by Philips selling its ownership stake in MedQuist in August, Atirix Medical Systems buying Provox Technologies in July, and Nuance adding eScription to its stable in May.
So add integration to the traditional workflow tenets of accuracy, ease-of-use, and speed that will be used to highlight speech recognition and reporting's mainstream acceptance and growing demand among hospitals and other nonacute healthcare facilities. Another overarching theme will be flexibility in terms of being able to customize fields without compromising efficiencies earned through open architecture and standardized data elements.
Check out what companies are showcasing in Chicago starting November 30.
