Transcribe Medical by Amazon Introduces Efficient ASR Medical Note-taking to EHR Vendors

As we begin 2020, digital assistants are becoming an increasingly vital aspect of our daily lives. Whether we’re interacting with Siri for hands-free information while driving or integrating our smart homes with Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, our voices are a major way we interact with the technology around us.

While voice recognition and transcription are far from new technologies, they still remain to be imperfect technologies that are improving over time. However, the value that these technologies can bring to a number of industries, including the healthcare industry, is immeasurable.

Amazon recently introduced Transcribe Medical: the efficient ASR medical note taking technology that input spoken interactions between patients and clinicians directly into EHRs. What does this technology look like, and how are healthcare data integration companies responding? The team at Iron Bridge is here to break it down.

What is Amazon’s Transcribe Medical?

Data Integration Companies Assess the Technology Behind Transcribe Medical

Amazon logo

Building on the advanced voice-recognition technology that inspired Amazon Alexa, Transcribe Medical is the advanced medical speech-to-text solution designed to streamline the note-taking and transcription processes in the medical field. This HIPAA-eligible machine learning automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology is designed to be extremely accurate and precise while making affordability a priority.

By creating true-to-speech, natural transcriptions of conversations between physicians and patients, Transcribe Medical makes clinical documentation faster, more accurate, and astoundingly secure for use in the medical field. Not only will Transcribe Medical improve processes for physicians, but on all levels of the healthcare industry. Providers, IT vendors, data integration companies, insurers, and pharmaceutical companies can all benefit from clear, quick, streamlined note-taking and data communication led by Amazon’s Transcribe Medical.

What Benefits does Transcribe Medical Bring to the Healthcare Industry?

Reduced Physician Burnout, Accurate Documentation, and Improved Patient Care

doctor and patient

Medical note-taking, unbeknownst to many people outside of the medical industry, takes up a major portion of physicians’ time. Sometimes occupying more than six hours of a physician’s day, transcribing notes from an interaction with a patient to an EHR can lead to high levels of physician burnout. Alternatives such as medical scribes are not only expensive from an HR standpoint but can decrease patient comfort while talking to a physician.

However, it’s vital that a physician documents detailed notes in an EHR. ASR technologies are used by many physicians already, but front-end dictation in many cases is unnatural, disruptive, and inefficient; physicians must take time to make major edits to the transcription and typically must explicitly dictate punctuation for it to occur correctly and naturally.

A little further down the line, Transcribe Medical’s ability to create clear transcriptions of physician interactions with patients improves the interoperable abilities of any EHR. Interoperable healthcare systems - driven primarily by data integration companies like Iron Bridge - are designed to streamline communications between EHRs, insurers, patients, and registries. This involves enhancing the speed in which data is recorded, communicated, and made usable from one vendor to another: an effort that is kicked-off by Transcribe Medical with the initial patient interaction.

How are Healthcare Data Integration Companies Responding?

Data Integration Companies Focus on Implementation and Value Proposition

Data integration

Data Integration Companies face a unique challenge as this technology rolls out. Not only do these companies face the challenge of adding a value proposition to their EHR clients, but they must tackle the implementation challenges related to using voice transcription within the healthcare industry.

Transcribe Medical is a fully-managed ASR service that offers an easy-to-use streaming API that integrates into any voice-enabled application. This involves the signing of a business associate agreement with Amazon Web Services and the company’s cloud computing arm. To use this technology, EHRs would need to be able to encrypt all protected health information to ensure HIPAA compliance and patient privacy. Another job of data integration companies involves integrating an API from Amazon into their applications, all of which can easily be handled by the team at Iron Bridge. This will ensure a smooth transition of data across interoperable structures, allowing vendors to take full advantage of the capabilities of Transcribe Medical.

Interested to see how Transcribe Medical can be integrated into your EHR? Get in touch with the team at Iron Bridge today to learn more about your integration possibilities.

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