Hospitals up the ante for medical transcription tools as vendors modernize with automation, voice recognition

By Jeff Lagasse for Healthcare IT News

New research determines that the time has come to finally replace those old analog devices.

Medical transcription tools have long been legacy products but as vendors inject modern technologies, notably automation and voice recognition, new data suggests that hospitals are going to deploy more of these products and services amid broader digital transformation work.

Medical transcription is the process by which doctors and healthcare professionals process health records, which are then converted into a readable format from voice and text. Such data is used largely by healthcare organizations and electronic health record initiatives.

Two research reports suggest that hospitals will deploy more medical transcription tools from companies.

Research firm Technavio published a report last month projecting that hospitals globally will spend more than 72 billion by 2020, representing 6 percent compound annual growth rate.

Technavio pointed to voice recognition technologies as a big driver of hospital plans while an analysis Radiant Insights published earlier this year added that key factors driving hospitals adopting transcription tools are reliability, portability and cost-effectiveness.

Growing adoption of automatic transcribing technologies, in fact, is expected to replace various analog devices in near future, according to Radiant. Other factors attributing to the growth of the market are the rise in the value of skilled professionals and an increase in the outsourcing of medical transcription services. On top of that, increases in the number of transcribers, coupled with years of training to learn various methodologies and terminologies, is expected to boost overall market demand in near future.

More hospitals are also outsourcing medical transcription services to third-parties, which the analysis expects to double. The medical transcription industry is considered one of the most vibrant segments in the healthcare management sector, since it is affected dramatically by evolving technologies.

Most medical transcription devices consist of built-in speech recognition and memory storage systems. Medical transcription is performed with the help of different techniques adopted by healthcare professional or in-house transcriptionists, factors that are predicted to drive market demand over the next few years.

That’s not to say there won’t be challenges. Concerns persist about partial medical transcription services and accuracy, which has been hampering the overall quality of medical transcripts over the past few years.