As Oscar Wilde once said, "There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is NOT being talked about."  Obviously, for a celebrity those are words to live by, but if you are anything like me, then you are more likely to feel visceral emotion when you read something in print about yourself, your family, your company, or things that you care deeply about.

Note: This blog entry is intended primarily for our partners – and potential partners -- in the Anatomic Pathology software space. If you are a Pathology professional, you are welcome to read on – and feel free to pass this on to your favorite Pathology software contact.  Ultimately, ALL of our partnerships are about your success and empowering you to save time, money, and lives.

Imagine you’re overhearing a conversation between two people and, in the middle of the discussion, one of the people says “colon”.  If you were busy checking a new text message on your phone or reading the latest tweet or blog from Voicebrook and this was ALL you heard, you might not know if this person is talking about the symbol, the anatomical structure, or a European colonial settler (seriously).  Now, had we also known that the word prior to “colon” was “ascending”, and that the two people speaking were pathologist assistants in the gross room, than those contextual clues would have made it easier for us to determine the correct meaning of this word.

Before I started working for Voicebrook, I had extensive experience working with PowerPath both at Yale University and as a member of the Sunquest and Elekta teams. A major reason I came to work with Voicebrook was that I found their Sunquest PowerPath speech recognition solution to be very beneficial and really cool!  For the purposes of this blog, I wanted to share with you six VoiceOver commands and features that could help you save time and improve your reporting experience in PowerPath (and are also pretty cool).

My colleagues and I are asked to list the importance and benefits of speech recognition in healthcare on a regular basis.  In response, we usually rattle off a number of benefits that we know to be true and a few that are subjective in nature.  What really surprises me is that the list has not changed much  since I became an early adopter of the technology as a Pathology Assistant back in the late 1980s.  Still, although the list has not changed, the technology has steadily improved and continues to perform better with each new software revision, each new computer processor, and each new microphone or related hardware option hitting the market.  This only makes for a stronger and more compelling list of reasons to use speech recognition as a reporting tool in healthcare. 

You've identified your pain points, done the research, made the decision, fought hard for the funding, and signed all of the paperwork. Now you are ready to empower your words to start saving time, money and lives! So what's the next step? Preparation for success!

As a Project Manager at Voicebrook, I witness both the excitement and the anxiety from our clients when we kickoff a new project. In my role, I take center stage to an audience of eager professionals who rely on me to manage their implementation from start to finish. Our clients are excited and want their VoiceOver solution working for them as quickly as possible, but this doesn't just happen magically. To be successful, it takes a level of effort from both sides. Preparing, even in advance of our project kickoff can be a huge advantage to ensure that your VoiceOver Implementation goes smoothly.

That is not exactly the title you expected to read from the CEO of the leading speech recognition reporting solution company for Pathology, is it?

Well, I was recently interviewed for an upcoming article in CAP Today regarding the present state of speech technology in Pathology reporting.  The author, Kevin O'Reilly, asked me to respond to a double-blind study conducted in 2012 by Steven Suvalsky, MHS, PA(ASCP) and Valerie Boelman, BS, LBC in Iowa.  The study used comparable personnel in comparable surgical pathology departments to measure the return on investment of using Dragon software in a lab and transferring elements of the workload from the transcriptionist to the PA and the Pathologist. 

Do you sometimes feel like your accuracy degrades as your day wears on?

I was at a client site recently and reminded of how important our state of mind is for consistent accuracy. I was observing a user who successfully uses VoiceOver on a daily basis, a VoiceOver pro. As I was observing, there was no question that their accuracy was just about 100%. However, there was an issue occurring under certain circumstances (which is why I was onsite) and there were some complaints that accuracy wasn’t always as expected.

Many Voicebrook customers are under the assumption that VoiceOver is built to navigate their Anatomic Pathology systems and workflows, and those people would be correct! However, many may not be aware that they can also control their entire computer using built-in Dragon Voice commands.