Toward Successful Implementation of Speech Recognition Technology: A Survey of SRT Utilization Issues in Healthcare Settings

Purpose To evaluate physician utilization of speech recognition technology (SRT) for medical documentation in two hospitals. Methods A quantitative survey was used to collect data in the areas of practice, electronic equipment used for documentation, documentation created after providing care, and overall thoughts about and satisfaction with the SRT. The survey sample was from one rural and one urban facility in central Missouri. In addition, qualitative interviews were conducted with a chief medical officer and a physician champion regarding implementation issues, training, choice of SRT, and outcomes from their perspective. Results Seventy-one (60%) of the anticipated 125 surveys were returned. A total of 16 (23%) participants were practicing in internal medicine and 9 (13%) were practicing in family medicine. Fifty-six (79%) participants used a desktop and 14 (20%) used a laptop (2%) computer. SRT products from Nuance were the dominant SRT used by 59 participants (83%). Windows operating systems (Microsoft, Redmond, WA) was used by more than 58 (82%) of the survey respondents. With regard to user experience, 42 (59%) participants experienced spelling and grammatical errors, 15 (21%) encountered clinical inaccuracy, 9 (13%) experienced word substitution, and 4 (6%) experienced misleading medical information. Conclusions This study shows critical issues of inconsistency, unreliability, and dissatisfaction in the functionality and usability of SRT. This merits further attention to improve the functionality and usability of SRT for better adoption within varying healthcare settings.

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