The Power of Intent: Why Words Matter in Medical Transcription

Physicians’ lives are challenging. In addition to the dozens of tasks you are tasked with day-to-day, you also have to ensure that you maintain an extremely concise and accurate standard of practice.

Documenting patient symptoms and health records has only become more important as increasing regulations closely monitor medical practices.

Back then, physicians knew exactly what they were “meaning to say” and could easily document their notes. However, as patient volume increases, there need to be more hours in the day to sit down and carefully transcribe every explicit detail of a patient visit.

This is why practices often rely on voice recognition technology to transcribe the data. Enter a new era of problems physicians never had to deal with before writing their notes–the issue of intent.

In this article, we will discuss:

• Physician Intent
• Artificial Intelligence and its Use in Medicine
• Voice Recognition Interfering with Physician Intent
• Alternatives to Voice Recognition

Artificial intelligence (AI) is implementing a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior or, in this case, intelligent physician behavior.  AI uses machine learning algorithms to input this information into EHR records. 

Artificial intelligence is implemented across various industries.

Here are some of the ways artificial intelligence is being used in the healthcare industry:

• Verifying insurance
• Virtual assistance services
• Using a robot to explain lab results
• Cybersecurity
• Disease Detection
• Voice recognition services

As you can see, using artificial intelligence in medicine has plenty of advantages. However, voice recognition software is most

commonly used in physician practices. Voice recognition (VR) is a form of artificial intelligence that turns speech into text. In other words, the physician speaks into the computer, and the laptop

transcribes what is said. This sounds like a great alternative to the physician’s manual transcriptions. However, there are also many reasons why voice recognition is falling  short–and here’s why:

It Takes Very Little to Send Things Away

Though voice recognition is on the radar, it is far from perfect–especially in the medical world. VR’s inability to pick up on context, slang, and colloquialisms makes it impossible for the software to understand the physician’s intent thoroughly. You cannot train a computer to understand the meaning of physicians–but humans do.

Example: “MS” can be an abbreviation for morphine or magnesium sulfate–two very different things. If humans were transcribing this abbreviation, they could use context clues to accurately decipher which term the acronym stood for. Whereas a machine is only able to understand explicit instructions.

Think of when you use your smartphone’s voice recognition to draft a text message or search for a restaurant. More often than not, your phone’s recognition service has a slightly different result than you intended.

This is because the software cannot properly detect pauses or proper accents and cannot process multiple speakers at once–resulting in a different result than what was intended.

The Importance of Specifics in Medical Language

Medical language is unique, with internal synonyms, antonyms, and abbreviations. While machines are programmed to understand medical language, a misplaced comma can mean a different diagnosis.

For example, a “trailing zero” (X.0mg) or lack of a “leadingzero” (.Xmg) look pretty similar if you’re not looking too closely. However, both mean something very different. Something as small as a misplaced decimal point can be enough to make the entire dosage incorrect–implicating some dire consequences for both the patient and the doctor.

It is the medical transcriptionist’s job to correctly and perfectly document this information while understanding mispronunciations and accents–something a machine  cannot do.

Voice Recognition Interfering With Physician Intent

VR Is Not Human Although voice recognition is smart, it simply is not human. This means that voice recognition can’t make decisions or have opinions about what it is transcribing. There are two ways in which VR algorithms differ from humans:

1. Voice recognition is literal: When you speak, the software does only what it’s explicitly told to do. In other words, voice recognition can’t adjust based on what was intended. 
2. Voice recognition is a black box: The algorithms of VR are extremely precise, however, they cannot decipher the cause or why of the situation, which poses a huge threat to physician intent.

Typically, when physicians implement voice recognition software into their practice, they believe it will save time and make their work easier. Voice recognition is often portrayed as a quick solution for transcription needs, however, this is not the case.

Due to its inability to pick up on important human language,it requires the work of a human to edit and check for any incorrectly transcribed dictation–resulting in more time required of physicians, not less.

Outsourcing for transcription services should be a way for physicians to save time, not something that takes away from it.

Physicians have enough on their plates without having to worry about going through and editing data collected by voice recognition software. Instead of dealing with the hassle that comes with machine learning software, it may be time to consider medical transcription services.

A carefully trained medical transcriptionist can not only transcribe highly accurate notes, but they can also understand the intricacies of medical terminology–a luxury that artificial intelligence does not yet have.

In addition, trained medical transcriptionists handle the editing of their transcriptions themselves, saving even more time for physicians. Quality is everything when it comes to dictating the proper notes from a doctor.

Electronic health record (EHR) software has streamlined documentation for healthcare professionals. Having an organized and easy-to-use EHR is essential for efficient patient care. And finding a company that can easily integrate into your electronic health record software is  even better!

And there you have it! Physicians who care about the accurate documentation of their words are physicians who use medical transcription services. By beginning your searchfor the perfect medical transcription company to partner with, you’re already on the way to achieving a more productive and efficient practice!

At DataMatrix Medical, we are proud to offer medical transcription services that save you time, allowing you to spend more time with your patients and less time in front  of a computer.