Homerton University Hospital NHS Trust deploys speech recognition tool

Homerton University Hospital NHS Trust has deployed Nuance Communication’s clinical speech recognition tool.

The trust, which is based in Hackney, East London, introduced Dragon Medical One to tackle the issue of rising administrative costs, as well as a slow turnaround time of clinical letters – which took around 17 days to process.

After deploying the technology, which enables clinicians to create patient records using just their voice, the hospital claims to have reduced the turnaround time on clinic letters to just two days, while also saving more than £150,000 per year on transcription expenditure.

Through Dragon Medial One, clinicians can enter their notes into the electronic patient record at the point of care, create clinic letters for patients which can also be sent electronically to the GP before the patient leaves the clinic.

This means patients benefit from faster, personalised communication and there are few lost or missed appointments.

Paul Adams, head of clinical information system at the trust, said: “The Nuance Dragon Medical One speech recognition engine, utilising artificial intelligence, is incredibly fast and accurate – making life for our clinicians easier.

“Future-proofing such investments has always been critical to us. As we’ve deployed Nuance through the cloud, we will benefit from continuous updates and our clinicians will have instant access to – and can take advantage of – new features and enhancements as soon as they are released.”

Nuance’s cloud-based product also integrates directly into Homerton’s existing Cerner Millennium electronic patient records (EPR) software.

Simon Wallace, CCIO at Nuance, said: “Homerton plays a critical role in the local community, delivering care services both inside and outside of the hospital. Its staff are often on the move and it needed an improved workflow and process for developing patient documentation in a timely and accurate manner.

“We worked with the in-house training team to onboard health staff with Dragon Medical One, enabling healthcare staff to develop patient records instantaneously through their speech, build fuller and more accurate reports, as well as freeing up medical secretaries to enhance patient flow and communications.”

You can find out more about the impact Nuance’s technology as had at Homerton at Digital Health’s Best Practice Webinar on 14 December.

Homerton is not the only NHS trust to benefit from Dragon Medical One.

In February 2018, a case study revealed South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust had reported “significant time saving” as a result of deploying the technology.