VoiceHIT Unveils Speech-Enabled Mobile Medical Dictation

New Orleans-based start-up VoiceHIT has launched a first-of-breed, Web-based smart electronic health record (EHR) platform, which will use voice technologies from Nuance Communications' healthcare division.

The offering, Better Day EHR & Documentation Solution, incorporates Nuance Healthcare's secure, cloud-based, medical speech recognition technology on iOS and Android-based mobile devices, enabling healthcare providers to document patient encounters in real-time via voice without the need for a computer or tablet device.

"By leveraging natural, context-based speech-to-text, the Better Day platform provides a better, more complete way for providers to document patient encounters, which in turn takes computers out from in between patients and providers, ultimately improving the relationships providers have with their patients," VoiceHIT CEO Peter Ragusa said in a statement.

The Better Day EHR platform enables healthcare providers to passively  collect clinical information at the point of care, significantly reducing manual data entry, typed or transcribed, by up to 75 percent. In doing so, the Better Day EHR platform gives providers more time with patients to deliver higher-quality care, VoiceHIT said.

The Better Day EHR's platform and application suite is currently in pilot testing and is expected to launch in a few weeks.

Last year Nuance released its medical speech recognition for Clinical Language Understanding, through the Nuance Healthcare Development platform for third-party developers, healthcare software vendors, and internal development teams at provider and payer organizations. The technology brings cloud-based speech recognition to smartphones, tablets, PCs, and browser-based applications that allows physicians, nurses, and other caregivers to dictate patient notes in real time into clinical apps, such as electronic health records.

Current partners include LifeDox, Massachusetts General Hospital, MedMaster, PhoenixOrtho, and The University of Miami. There are now 24 commercial partners who will launch products using the Nuance Healthcare Development platform, with products expected to hit the market in the next two to three months. The company also has 100 active evaluation partners.

Jonathon Dreyer, senior manager, mobile solutions marketing, Nuance Healthcare, said the technology is taking off. "Just a week ago we launched our mobile clinician voice challenge and asked developers to integrate their apps into the platform," he said. "We've seen huge interest and really unique clinical and patient apps for mobile, EMR (electronic medical records), and reference tools."

The challenge awards developers $25,000 in prizes and runs through February 3.