Speech Recognition Technology in Healthcare
Healthcare is one of the biggest industries in the world. Doctors, nurses, and other health care practitioners are using technology to enhance their performance. Voice recognition technologies and medical speech recognition software have become essential for healthcare providers. This sector includes many companies developing highly efficient voice recognition tools.
The need for speech recognition in healthcare has grown with the increasing use of computers and IoT devices. According to Accenture, it is estimated that there are 6.5 million clinicians using voice search technology for clinical research and more than 1 million clinicians utilizing personal cell phones to improve patient care.
Speech Recognition in Healthcare: 10 ways it’s transforming modern medicine
1. Speech Analysis for Transcription
Transcription enables healthcare professionals to take dictation from any source quickly and easily while making sense of the information it provides. Also, transcription enables medical professionals to conduct research and perform analysis with greater precision, accuracy, and speed than would otherwise be possible.
2. Voice Search and Machine Intelligence
One of the largest issues that healthcare professionals face, particularly when dealing with patient interactions, is the difficulty of finding appropriate speech recognition systems. Many hospitals have long struggled to find reliable and affordable software solutions. When it comes to recognizing speech, medical professionals can often rely on natural language processing because they can search for an appropriate service through keywords in texts. However, since machine intelligence and voice search technology are relatively new, such searches may not always provide them with the desired result. Furthermore, while searching for the correct speech recognition system, the user may also suffer from problems related to interpreting speech and noise from background sounds. Given there are numerous different types of speech recognition systems, medical professionals should be wary of such things as they can they can disrupt both clinical and clinical situations.
3. Speech Recognition in Medical Rehabilitation
Medical rehabilitation professionals are constantly tasked with working towards improving their patient’s overall health and managing their physical and emotional well-being. They also have to deal with a large number of clients who experience a variety of conditions ranging from the obvious ones like heart disorders, neurological diseases, and other mental illnesses to rarer psychiatric illnesses and gastrointestinal illnesses. With all this in mind, rehabilitation of speech recognition technology could soon become highly beneficial to those in this field as it offers medical rehabilitation professionals increased opportunities and efficiency to interact with and assist their patients.
4. Real-Time Speech Analytics and Interpreting
Interpreting speech in real-time offers several advantages that healthcare professionals can utilize. By taking a step back, one can see that such speech analytics systems have already provided considerable benefits in healthcare, such as helping patients manage chronic conditions and medication intake effectively. If given enough support, these technologies might also allow healthcare professionals to develop effective interventions by making available an extensive database of personal habits, behaviors, and emotions. More importantly, this information could help healthcare professionals understand the underlying reasons of diseases and their treatment, such as depression or anxiety. Another advantage of speech analyzes in healthcare is allowing doctors to identify the behavioral patterns of their patients and develop customized programs to improve their health.
5. Speech Analytics for Diagnosis
With all of the recent advances in AI, medical professionals have started exploring areas like speech analytics for diagnosis. This technology can be extremely useful when paired with proper training in how to correctly diagnose certain medical conditions, such as a speech analysis of the patient’s speech and language.
6. Speech Recognition for Speech Therapy
As early as 1980, speech therapy began focusing on patients who suffered from specific types of hearing loss and brain injury. Early on, speech therapy involved recording and playing back speech recordings of the patient’s speech. Eventually, this method changed and became more advanced in terms of functionality. Today, the practice of speaking therapyincludes several ways of assisting patients. These include speech recognition applications. Speech recognition technology, in particular, has proven highly helpful in speech therapy, as it allows therapists to hear and understand the patient’s speaking more accurately.
7. Smart Glasses, Wearable Computers, and Virtual Personal Assistants
All of the above-stated technologies are likely to become hugely popular among healthcare professionals. Most of the aforementioned products in question use proprietary speech recognition applications that offer specialized features and functions. But in the future, they stand to take on even more vital roles. A major area of interest may be cognitive computing, which makes use of machine learning algorithms in cognitive operations, and speech recognition to give users superior performance.
8. Speech Interpretation for People with Disabilities
The next large category of speech recognition in healthcare is the development of adaptive systems, which are designed to adapt themselves to people with disabilities differently. Through this approach, healthcare professionals will soon have access to machines that are capable of understanding speech, whether spoken or written.
9. More Treatment Options
Clinical trials in pharmaceutical industries that leverage artificial intelligence and computerized voice-enabled devices are growing exponentially. For instance, the number of patients undergoing gene therapy drug candidates in the COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials is growing too. Many companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, are utilizing AI-powered digital records to track large volumes of patients and keep track of the safety and side effects of their drugs.
10. Patient Engagement
People who are unable to engage in regular conversation with hospitals can always talk to one of their fellow healthcare professionals over the phone. Doctors can offer guidance, answer questions and advice through telephone conversations. They can easily and easily conduct follow-up consultations with patients to optimize the experience in the hospital. Patients also love the ability to speak directly with a doctor using natural-sounding tones. Such voice-based systems for communicating with hospitals have helped in increasing patient satisfaction ratings. For instance, a recent study on telehealth applications in the U.S. found that 86% of respondents said using telephones has increased their trust in their team, 68% of individuals believe that telephones have reduced misdiagnostic errors, and 84% of patients in general reported a positive experience to use telephones. Hence, there’s no doubt that telephony in healthcare is increasing as well as patient engagement.
As the healthcare industry continues to grow globally, its leaders are beginning to realize the importance and necessity of adopting several new technological solutions to deliver value-added care. Although speech recognition is an emerging trend in healthcare, its benefits continue to surface in other industries. Nonetheless, it remains difficult to imagine future technological advances taking place without a deep understanding and application of speech recognition technology in healthcare. Given the vast amounts of current developments underway, it is difficult to predict how far speech recognition will progress in the near future. Nevertheless, as we look with optimism, it is reassuring to know that speech recognition still holds enormous promise in improving patient care and increasing overall safety. Through innovation and continued dedication, the healthcare sector should be able to reap the tremendous potential offered by this promising technology.
