Jim White

Assistant Professor of Medicine, Physiology, and Pharmacology

University of Rochester Medical Center

Today, Dr. Jim White does 70% to 80% of all his computer input using Dragon Naturally Speaking software, including all of his patient chart updates. A self-confessed "geek," White has been waiting years for computing power to catch up to the processing requirements of speech recognition software. Now the computing speed is there, he says, and Dragon is faster than typing.

White's approach to using the software is unique, however. Rather than dictate a chart directly into a computer file using a headset or stationary microphone, he dictates into a handheld device and then, later, hooks the recorder up to a computer and has Dragon transcribe it without his being present. He has a high school student come in the day after he's seen patients to oversee the file uploads and to correct obvious speech recognition errors.

This remote transcription has a number of advantages, he points out, the biggest being that he doesn't see mistakes as they occur on-screen during the transcription, so he doesn't feel compelled to stop what he's doing and fix them immediately, which can slow down the process.

Once transcribed, the one large file of patient notes gets separated into different files and placed in the appropriate chart. By the third day, all the charts have been placed in the correct patient file and are available for review. White points out that, when necessary, his system is flexible enough that "if I need to, I can turnaround something in five minutes."

The same is not so true in his department, which relies on one transcriptionist to serve 10 to 12 physicians. With that tremendous workload, it's no wonder that she's often behind. Last summer, the backlog was as much as four weeks, in fact. But not in White's office, where, with the help of his Dragon software, his files were transcribed as quickly as he needed them to be. "It's infinitely faster" than the old way, he says.

Of course, he's already started using version 9.0, which was just released a few weeks ago.