In another expansive implementation of speech technology in healthcare, iSOFT, a division of the British-based IBA Health Group, today announced that it will integrate Royal Philips Electronic’s SpeechMagic technology into its RadCentre radiology information system.  

SpeechMagic uses speech-to-text and speech recognition to allow radiologists to dicate reports. Intelligent Speech Interpretation allows the software to recognize the context of utterances and therefore ignore dialogue that is not part of the dictation, implement corrections, and rephrase sentences. The solution also fills in forms and organizes text into section headings, much like a word processor, to generate usable reports.  

"More than 8,000 organizations world-wide have now implemented speech recognition solutions which are powered by SpeechMagic to optimize document creation and improve healthcare efficiency," said Gary Williams, partner program manager for Philips Speech Recognition Systems, in a recent release.  "Together with iSOFT, we can now further improve patient’ healthcare experience and potentially save lives by speeding up documentation flows and ensuring the availability of patient information when needed, where needed."

SpeechMagic has already been heavily integrated in healthcare centers around the U.K. Last August, for example, 60 radiologists at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary began using SpeechMagic in what is the largest front-end speech recognition deployment in the U.K.