Spotlight on patient safety

Medical errors can occur in any part of the treatment process and typically involve the wrong medication, improper treatment, or incorrect or delayed test results. Philips is using its leading global position in healthcare speech recognition to drive technology advancements towards reducing medical errors and improving patient safety through verbal information capturing in the electronic health record. 

With 850,000 medical errors reported from the UK each year, action is desperately required to improve patient safety: The European Commission, DG Health and Consumer Protection, observes that “the health sector still lags behind other industries and services that have introduced systematic safety processes.” The Commission recommends “optimising the use of new technologies, for example, by introducing electronic health records.”

A record, however, is only as good as the information it contains. Speech recognition can help capture this information conveniently, reliably and accurately – thus providing physicians with better decision support for better patient care.

“Where is the information?” Philips Speech Recognition System’s CEO, Marcel Wassink, says speech recognition must be a standard option for inputing information into electronic health records, as it can help to save lives. Piloting physicians: Navigating safely through stormy skies If critical and relevant information is presented to physicians in a clear and effective way, they can become much more of a pilot, navigating and taking decisions based on accurate data. Latest NHS case studies: Grampian & Northumbria Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in Scotland has implemented SpeechMagic for 65 radiologists and NHS Northumbria was the first to aim for an entirely speech recognition-based dictation and transcription system.