London, UK – 8th February 2018 - Today, Nuance Communications announces the results of a new study which analyses the impact of the deployment of speech recognition within the Emergency Department (ED) at South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The study results are derived from an in-depth structured questionnaire capturing the perceptions of participating clinicians in ED.

The study reveals that ED clinicians report that speech recognition is 40% faster than handwriting or typing clinical documentation. Extrapolating the reported documentation time savings per patient over a year is the equivalent of gaining almost two full-time clinical staff in ED.

A previous study commissioned by Nuance identified that 50% or more of a doctor´s time is spent on clinical documentation processes and that around 52 minutes per day can be spent searching for information not captured or not clear in the record. There may be few who would challenge the view that accuracy and completeness of clinical documentation is essential for safe delivery of care but the time taken ultimately detracts from the time that clinicians are able to spend with their patients.

Following implementation of the ED’s electronic patient record (EPR) there was a clear need to improve the ease and speed of creation as well as the quality of the patient record for ED clinicians. To tackle this South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust deployed Nuance Dragon Medical speech recognition integrated into the EPR to help its clinicians overcome the growing administration burden.

The results from the study showed that the use of speech recognition reduced time spent documenting care, boosted the quality of the patient record and improved the speed of communication. The average time saving using speech recognition versus typing was almost 3 minutes per patient. Extrapolating this average time saving per patient by the corresponding volume of patients attending ED per annum would be the equivalent of gaining almost two full-time ED clinicians.

The quality of the patient record was also boosted. 86% of clinicians involved in the deployment agreed that speech recognition enabled more complete patient notes. Nine in 10 of clinicians felt that using speech recognition compared to handwriting and typing saved time, improved the quality of the notes and increased the speed of communication with others.

Other findings from the report include:

·        Speech recognition is now the clinicians’ preferred means of capturing clinical documentation into the EPR across ED

·        All clinicians reported that the speech recognition deployment in ED had a positive impact

·        Most (67%) of clinicians believed patients had no concerns with their use of speech recognition

Commenting on the findings, Dr Andrew Adair, ED consultant and CCIO, South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust stated: “Speech recognition has transformed our ED, releasing our doctors and nurses from the shackles of clinical documentation and enabling them to spend more time treating patients.”

The full report can be found here.