Partnership to Provide Nurses with Point-of-Care System for Structured Medical Reporting

A wireless, portable device that captures information in real time helps to eliminate manual data entry and transcription, providing fast availability and access to critical patient information.

Royal Philips Electronics (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) recently announced that its SpeechMagic technology would be integrated into VoiceViewer Technologies' (Bannockburn, IL, USA) application software to support the accurate and efficient capture of patient information at the point of care. The companies presented a new handheld device that allows nursing staff to enter information into their systems by voice at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2008 meeting, February 25-28, 2008, in Orlando, FL, USA. With this collaboration, Philips continues to expand the application of speech recognition technologies in healthcare and support patient safety by enabling healthcare staff to capture and act upon reliable information.

Because of a wireless information transfer to a hospital's central information system, physicians can quickly see if a patient's condition has changed. For example, by getting a faster update on the change of a patient's blood pressure or heart rate, the device may allow them to react quickly to a worsening condition.

VoiceViewer, powered by SpeechMagic, also features a preloaded check list that helps ensure that nurses check and record all vital patient data, such as respiratory or behavior patterns. Spoken information is recorded as structured actionable data, which can be automatically downloaded to a data collection system. Users can rely completely on voice input, but also have the option of using the touch screen or a keypad. The hardware provides storage capacity for approximately 100 forms, and an additional 3,000 forms can be stored on an optional SD card.

"Nurses are a scarce resource that work in high-stress, data-intensive environments, and have a constant need to collaborate with colleagues and patients,” said Marcel Wassink, managing director of Philips Speech Recognition Systems (Vienna, Austria). "Speech recognition-based point-of-care computing is poised to revolutionize the way they practice and deliver patient care. It not only enables faster access to clinical information, it can also reduce the risk of medical errors and improve nursing productivity.”

According to a report by Spyglass Consulting Group (Menlo Park, CA, USA), healthcare organizations have made significant investments upgrading their clinical information systems and technical infrastructure to extend the reach of existing systems at or near the point of care, thus enabling nurses, physicians, and other allied health professional to access patient health information when and where needed. However, many of the existing systems do not meet the requirements of patient-centric mobile workflows, according to Spyglass.

"There is a strong need for innovative and mobile point-of-care devices which are well integrated in the nursing workflow, and do not distract their attention from the patient,” said Micheal Petera, founder and CEO, VoiceViewer Technologies. "By working with Philips we will create new professional applications that allow for more flexibility and efficiency in the nursing staff and help them increase safety by spending more time with their patients. This cooperation will finally bring industrial-grade speech recognition technology to a fundamentally important group in the delivery of quality care.”


Related Links:
VoiceViewer Technologies
Philips Speech Recognition Systems
Spyglass Consulting Group