With the advances in voice recognition technology and with it the proliferation of voice–to–text programs, using medical transcription software has become a must, not only for medical transcriptionists, but for medical professionals of all sorts, as well. This type of software makes transcribing easier and more efficient.

Easy Information Retrieval

In the past, physicians usually scribbled handwritten notes on paper when meeting with patients. This would serve as the patient record and had every bit of pertinent information about the patient. With numerous doctors and numerous patients all over the world, this furious note scribbling lead to massive repositories of paper records stored in file cabinets. Due to this, organisation of files is hampered and searching for a particular patient record amounts to the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack at times.

With the advent of medical software, physicians and other medical professionals can simply dictate patient notes into a recording device for later transcription into a digital record. With the technology currently available, once the notes are dictated into a recorder, they can be uploaded to an audio file in a computer, and the transcription program works its magic. The physician can go back to the document at a later time for editing if it is necessary.

Advances in the technology of voice recognition have increased the accuracy rate of transcription to a staggering 99%. Some transcription programs, through artificial intelligence, can learn the user’s speech pattern and even new words introduced by the user to the database. Dragon Medical for example boasts of having a vocabulary database that covers 80 specialties and subspecialties.

For basic, non–critical documentation, instead of acquiring a medical transcription program, doctors can rely on the free voice–to–text program included in Windows Vista and Windows 7, which has a high accuracy rate. The drawback however, is that it doesn’t have the 99% accuracy rate of some transcription programs, along with the medical vocabulary database included in the programs.

Voice-to-Text Advantages

By using these voice–to–text programs, doctors and other medical professionals are able to save money and time. They don’t have to pay for costly transcription services anymore, but should they decide to employ the services of a medical transcriptionist, they no longer have to wait for the transcriptionist to finish listening to the audio file and then transcribe the often lengthy recordings.

There are disadvantages to it though. Aside from having to buy the software, doctors should have top–of–the–line microphones and soundcards installed in their computers to ensure higher accuracy rates. Time will also spent not only in learning the use of voice commands but in "teaching" the software to recognize their speech patterns. Also, the use of medical transcription software cannot guarantee 100% accuracy and doctors will still have to go back to the transcribed documents to do some editing, however minimal.