Podcast interview with Keith Belton of Nuance Communications

[audio http://healthbb.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/dragon3.mp3]
Nuance Communications just released version 10 of its Dragon Medical speech recognition software. I saw a demo of the product and it's pretty neat. You can talk as fast as you want and use voice shortcuts to create blocks of text. It expands JCAHO "do not use" abbreviations into full text and is pre-programmed to understand medical terminology for different specialties. One cool feature: users can set their accent (e.g., Indian, Australian) and the system will understand them right away. Considering the high percentage of physicians from abroad that's bound to be useful.Dragon is used in conjunction with electronic health records (EHRs). The company says it has about 70,000 clinician users, equating to about 15 percent of all clinicians in practice. Considering the relatively low penetration of EHRs, that's a pretty impressive claim.I spoke today with Nuance's Keith Belton, who provided detail on the new version.