BigHand today launched a healthcare-specific version of its BigHand product. This new version is released following extensive client and market input and includes numerous product enhancements designed explicitly for the U.K. National Health Trust.

BigHand for Healthcare is a customized voice productivity solution that replaces analogue or tape-based systems used in medical dictation and transcription. Clinicians, medical secretaries, and service-level managers are provided with an interface enabling them to  create, track, transcribe, and manage workloads, as well as allowing them to instantly leverage the power of server-based speech recognition engines or smartphone-based dictation. The BigHand for Healthcare system allows for instant sharing across hospitals, sites and specialities.

New features include:

• Clinic Builder - Allows clinic administrators or secretaries to automate the creation of pre-titled draft dictations on behalf of busy clinicians; this information, in XML format, can be fed directly from PAS or EPR. This allows clinicians to simply dictate and send without having to spend time adding a title to dictations, and in turn provides the trust with consistent/standardized titling protocol.
•  Profiling - The ability to profile dictations with various metadata, such as document type, PAS/NHS number, or clinic ID, and add additional notes provides users with important information about dictations. Importantly, BigHand extended this functionality to automatically include smartphones (BlackBerry and iPhone). In addition the profile information can again be imported from, say, PAS, allowing each clinician to have their own personal drop-down list of patients they are scheduled to see on that day. This is all controlled centrally via BigHand’s unique System Administration.
• Automated Workflow - BigHand can automatically re-route work to a new workflow, including server-side speech recognition or outsourcing, if it has not been completed by a specific time. This enables trusts to configure automatic rules to ensure that work is done on time.
• Work Management - A new column was requested by clients that shows a warning icon when an escalation event is imminent (workflow or priority escalation), and a time expired icon when the dictation is overdue. This enables secretaries clear visibility of work that is about to generate an alert so that they can prioritise their work load accordingly. Another new column requested shows an icon for dictations that have been reallocated using drag and drop allowing service-level managers to quickly see work that has been re-allocated.
• BigHand Analytics - With the ever-increasing pressure on trusts to deliver more for less, BigHand  developed an analytics solution allowing trusts unrivalled auditing capability for dictation life cycles providing visible and transparent management information. Every single dictation can be viewed with a few clicks and, uniquely, information can be stored indefinitely.

James Kippenberger, managing director of UK Healthcare, commented: "This new version helps demonstrate BigHand’s commitment to the U.K. healthcare sector. Critically, it shows we are listening to real customers and reacting quickly to their needs. There is huge demand for digital dictation, and related products and services, across the U.K. and, with the well understood pressures already here, with more on their way, trusts need to know that any choice of supplier has to be with one who understands their world, and can react to what is needed. This is the first wave of many new healthcare developments to be expected from BigHand. We look forward to announcing even more developments, already being worked on, at our User Conference in October.”

NHS Ttusts that have already invested in BigHand technology include, the Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust, Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, Wrightington, Wigan & Leigh NHS Trust, the Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust, Basildon & Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust, the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.