IT Innovation Award

The need for timely, effective information in healthcare is key to realising the benefits of the huge investments in NHS staff and buildings. This award will recognise the most innovative introduction of new technology for storing, retrieving and distributing data throughout the NHS.

2009 WINNER: East Kent Hospitals University Foundation NHS Trust

Speech recognition software implementation

East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust is one of the largest hospital trusts in England, with five hospitals and several outpatient facilities across East Kent and Medway.

The Trust has been able to reduce diagnosis times by deploying digital dictation with speech recognition technology, allowing pathologists to dictate results in real-time. As a result, histology reporting turnaround times have been cut from a week to often the same day.

The first stage of the initiative started in January 2008. Service provider SRC helped with the deployment of Winscribe's digital dictation workflow management system to allow pathologists to describe tissue specimens at the cut-up area using wireless headsets. The voice files were sent immediately to a back-end server, where they became immediately available to a team of transcriptionists, resulting in time savings of about 10 per cent.

The second phase of the scheme was implemented in June last year. It lets pathologists record microscopy reports at their workstations rather than needing to write them by hand. As well as time savings of 20 per cent, this generates an audit trail for voice files, which makes it easier to track changes and find missing information. A traffic light system lets users see whether transcribed files have been fully checked.

In November, Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition software was integrated the trust's iSoft Apex laboratory information management system, meaning staff can dictate straight into Apex. This enables same day report turnaround times, and will be reflected in cost savings in terms of patient treatment as it should result in a faster turnaround of beds.

The next step is to implement voice recognition into additional applications. Further enhancements to the WinScribe based SRC solution include an advanced document production capability for creating, authorising and distributing letters and emails.

COMMENDED

Liverpool Womens NHS Foundation Trust - Exterity Patient IPTV
NHS Northamptonshire - Server consolidation project