Crunch time

Today’s integration projects are all about delivering higher quality, more efficient services – and they have to justify themselves in financial terms. Daloni Carlisle reports.

Talk to the machine

The business of producing discharge summaries is also raised by Alistair Graham, sales and technical director at Voice Technologies. At one level, generating letters is a systems integration job; enabling a doctor to pull relevant information off the electronic patient record and put it into a document for the GP.

But that’s only part of the piece. The document also has to be managed - dictated, formatted, approved, corrected, dispatched. It is only once this is automated that the added value of monitoring for quality can be added in. “We view this as a process,” says Graham. “Getting a platform for digital dictation is one step. Moving to integration is next and then finally you can add speech recognition.”

And at each step along the way, suppliers will be telling trusts that they can deliver the savings that managers so desperately need to make.

England offers best value healthcare

Reports on the BBC show that the NHS in England provides better value for money than elsewhere in the UK.  The Nuffield Trust found there were fewer health staff per head in England, but higher levels of activity and productivity, as well as shorter waits.

The differences were most marked when England was compared with Scotland, and perhaps unsurprisingly, health officials in Scotland believe the comparison to be unfair and out-of-date, pointing out that many of the measures had improved since the study was carried out.

Indeed, it would be difficult to make a fair comparison between the four nations, as they collect different data in different ways.  Nevertheless, a clearly delighted spokesperson for the DH in England said the findings were "testament to the tremendous hard work and achievement of NHS staff".

Improvements and efficiency gains have been made, but perhaps the elephant in the room here is that productivity levels across the UK have fallen over the same period, and this is something we need to address with urgency, given the economic situation and squeeze on NHS spending.

Healthcare providers are going to have to do more with less, and one way to achieve this is through the use of technology to streamline and speed up core processes.   Digital dictation is just one example of a technology which is helping to speed up the time taken to produce reports and letters, with turnaround times cut by over 50%. 

The Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre is just one example of a healthcare provider using Voice Technologies’ digital dictation and speech recognition solutions to cut turnaround times in half, boost workflow efficiency and enable secretaries to handle an increased workload.

Voice Technologies’ digital dictation solutions are now also available to Trusts south of the border, thanks to the Yorkshire and Humber Commercial Procurement Collaborative agreement, giving acute, primary care and mental health trusts the ability to make significant cost and efficiency gains through digital dictation and speech recognition.

Unique solution showcases at top health IT event

Leading digital dictation and speech recognition company Voice Technologies is set to attend the top event for healthcare IT in the UK.

The company will showcase its innovative solutions at the E–Health Insider Live 2009 conference and exhibition from 9-10 November.

Held at the ICC in Birmingham, the event brings together industry professionals and experts from all over the UK for provocative debate, inspiring seminars and innovative showcases.

As well as explaining the many digital dictation and speech recognition products and services it offers, Voice Technologies will also demonstrate its unique and innovative WinVoicePro software. The application works with internationally renowned dictation management software WinScribe to save time and money in the creation of correspondence from dictation.

Heather Wylie, Managing Director of Voice Technologies, said: “For people attending this two-day exhibition, they will be given the chance to see our approach to helping NHS organisations increase efficiency and meet their 18-week referral to treatment target.”

Already, as the exclusive supplier on the NHS Scotland’s digital dictation and speech recognition supplier framework, and recently, having won a place on a similar framework for Yorkshire and Humber that is available to a large number of NHS Trusts, Voice Technologies aims to spread its solutions to a wider audience throughout the UK.

Heather continued: “The event will give NHS Trusts a chance to see how our solutions, which have already had a huge impact in the health sector, can bring the same benefits to their organisations.”

For more information on E-Health Insider Live 2009, visit www.ehealthinsiderlive.com

NHS in England gets access to Voice Technologies and WinScribe

More than 200 NHS organisations in England now have the chance to more easily access solutions from Voice Technologies to help meet timeline targets, thanks to a new framework contract.

The Yorkshire and Humber Commercial Procurement Collaborative (YHCPC) agreement will mean organisations such as Hospital Trusts, Mental Health Partnerships and Primary Care Trusts can quickly access digital dictation, speech recognition and outsource transcription from the company, among other suppliers on the framework.

Voice Technologies, the exclusive supplier for in the NHS framework for Scotland, provides industry leading dictation management software from WinScribe to accelerate processes, while improving accuracy and security in the NHS.

And a recent agreement with the world-class software company will see Voice Technologies’ own application, WinVoicePro, integrated into WinScribe’s products. This pioneering piece of software, developed in partnership with, and enjoyed by customers in the NHS, helps speed up the creation of correspondence from dictation, while integrating easily into healthcare systems. 

Heather Wylie, Managing Director of Voice Technologies said: “This framework covers about 40 per cent of the trusts in England. That’s a significant number of organisations that can now more easily discover the benefits of WinScribe and WinVoicePro from Voice Technologies to help meet targets such as the 18-Week Referral to Treatment pathway.”

“As the exclusive supplier on not only the Scotland framework, but also the framework for Yorkshire and Humber, we have been recognised as the leader in the field,” Heather said. “It is also a recognition that we have the experience to help trusts across England unlock greater productivity and accuracy through industry leading software and hardware.”

Heather continued: “This framework is a great initiative from YHCPC, meaning that a huge number of organisations can access our solutions without undertaking a time-consuming procurement process.”

Voice Technologies will be on the NHS Yorkshire and Humber Collaborative Procurement Hub framework, as one of six suppliers, for a period of four years.