Time, Money, and Lives Blog

Have you ever wondered why your computer starts to get sluggish? Opening your email is slow, news articles take FOREVER to download, and nothing seems to be working right. Well, your computer has probably been up too long. Calling IT or support will tell you to restart it, but why? Like a person, if you leave a computer up for too long without restarting, it just exhausts itself. Too many activities and programs are running, and the computer cannot keep up. "But how did IT know my computer had been up for so long?" You wonder, "Where are they finding a list of these activities?" The answer is the Task Manager, and understanding how to use it can actually empower you to take control of your own troubleshooting!

Now that the holidays are over, it's time to get back to work dictating cases. You say, "Surgical, one zero," accession number S-18-00010 opens up, and it's business as usual.  Like many programs, VoiceOver adapts to the new year, so going forward with new cases won't require any additional steps. If, however, you want to open and dictate a case from 2017, you will need to issue a different command.

This brief blog explains how these commands work and what you need to say in order to open up the correct accession number for the correct year.

Have you ever grossed a specimen and realized that additional blocks needed to be printed? I remember working on-site in the Gross Room years ago and a Pathologists Assistant remarked, "I wish I could print blocks using VoiceOver." 

Having been in that position myself as a former grossing technician, I understood the frustration and went back to my team with the challenge of coming up with a solution to address this need.  We evaluated the process the site used to print blocks and developed a set of voice commands to achieve this.

Included below is a video that demonstrates this solution.

One of my roles as a Project Manager with Voicebrook is to communicate the important elements of a successful Pathology vocabulary and to gather information from each site to maximize initial accuracy.

Speech recognition software, especially those tailored to medicine, include a comprehensive vocabulary right out of the box. VoiceOver is built on the Dragon Medical 360 Platform, which includes a Pathology specific vocabulary designed for the creation of Pathology reports. Still, staff names, facilities, special stains, etc. will be misrecognized during dictation if you don't plan properly before implementation. If you have already implemented a speech recognition solution or are in the process, you may have been asked about custom vocabulary items that are specific to your lab. The aim of this customization is to save time and hassle during dictation by removing the need for multiple corrections down the road.

The holidays are over, and everyone is back to the grind.   It's time to start diagnosing casework and you issue your first command to begin dictating a new accession number.  You say, "Surgical, one zero,"and accession number S-16-00010 opens up and it's business as usual.  But wait, you think.  How did VoiceOver know to open up a case from this year without specifying the year in the command nomenclature, and what do I say if I want to dictate a case from 2015?

This brief blog explains how these commands work and what you need to say in order to open up the correct accession number for the correct year.