Medical Transcription Trends

Or will it make more jobs… or make the Medical Transcriptionist’s job easier?  The Medical Transcriptionist’s job is to decipher recordings and written notes from medical professionals and type them into a computer document using very definitive terminology.

But now we have voice recognition software. It’s not new; I was using it as a writer ten years ago! But back then it was not as refined as it is now, it made too many mistakes and took too long to “train” for it to be a lot of use to a Medical Transcriptionist. But, like all technology, it is improving and it is being made to understand better and better and become more accurate. At this point, you still must train it to know your voice inflections and understand what you are saying and then type it correctly for you. With all the medical jargon in the Medical Transcriptionist’s job, it can be difficult and time consuming to train.

However, will there be a voice recognition software in the future that is made for the sole purpose of transcribing medical data? Or, will ordinary voice recognition software become so “trainable” that doctors will use it directly instead of sending their recordings and documents off to someone else to transcribe?

From an anonymous Hospital Administrator: “Voice technology, i.e., where the clinician dictates into a microphone and a COMPUTER types the report, is getting better and better and in the process, is replacing Medical Transcriptionist positions. Many places have cut back the transcriptionist staff. Some places have replaced the Medical Transcriptionist with lesser trained typists, to proof reports and make minor corrections and what not.”

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