Beyond speech recognition to speech understanding: Podcast interview with M*Modal's Juergen Fritsch

[audio http://website.guild.im/williams/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2010/04/mmodal3.mp3]
I've written recently about how speech recognition can enhance physician productivity in the use of electronic health records. Meanwhile, M*Modal goes a step beyond voice recognition to what it calls "speech understanding" --the ability to transform physician dictation into a structured document. I saw a demonstration of the system and was impressed by the way the system interpreted the user's dictation.In this podcast interview, M*Modal's chief scientist, Juergen Fritsch describes the philosophy behind the system, advantages over other approaches, and the company's contribution to helping providers meet Meaningful Use requirements.M*Modal has just been named to Gartner's "Cool Vendors in Healthcare Providers, 2010" list, and I can understand why.