Best Practices for using a Speech to text software for doctors

Sharjeel Siddique
3 min readJul 30, 2019

It’s well-recorded that the doctor-patient relationship is the foundation of the medicinal solutions. From getting to the core of a finding to influencing the result of the health care. A great relationship between doctor and patient can amplify the process.

Time is a fundamental component that is required to build a significant connection between the doctor and the patient. Doctors have so much on their plates already, and then on top of everything else they have the EHR, which doctors are mandated to use in most developed countries to maintain patient records.

To allow efficiency in a doctor’s practice, many tools have been developed on top of the existing EHR’s to introduce efficiency and save time for doctors.

One such is the Speech to text software. With the advent of Dragon Speech. Doctors have reported saving lots of time.

Speech-recognition is software that any size health care association can use as a component to improve the charting experience.

A lot of doctors have signed up after seeing their colleagues using speech-to-text software and noticing the difference it has made in their work and wants to start using the technology.

Doctors on average, have reported saving 5 minutes on each patient. The slider from https://voiceboxmd.com/ is helpful to know how much time you can save using a speech to text software.

If you have been in the medical industry for quite some time, you probably already know the importance of Dictation and its advantages.

Because of doctors, little experience in using technology, a large portion of them have reported having difficulties in using the software. This can also be attributed to lack of resource and help available online to teach how to use a speech to text software.

In this article, regardless of which Speech to text software you use, whether it is Dragon or VoiceboxMD. I will go through some standard best practices to use to achieve better result in dictation.

Keep background noise to a reasonable minimum: When dictating, it is vitally important that you are in an area where there is no interference of background noise. Ensure the windows are closed to block out street noise or turn down the volume of anything that can be considered as background noise.

Position your microphone properly: Place the microphone head close and directly in front of your mouth. Keep in mind to not place it too close to your mouth this can cause the audio to be too loud and can result in audio distortion.

Figure out which position is best for you: Hold the microphone the same way each time you use it. Identify which position you are getting the best result and try to maintain that position every time you are charting.

Do not dictate into the side of the microphone: Make sure that you have not placed your microphone on side. Speaking into the microphone side reduces the quality and sound of the dictation.

Use punctuation: You can add punctuation by saying what you want. Punctuation helps in formatting and can be very useful in charting overall.

For example, saying “I have prescribed Patient Mark comma the necessary drug exclamation mark” becomes “I have prescriber Patient Mark, the necessary drug!”

Speak slowly and steadily: Make sure that while speaking, you are speaking clearly and slowly. You may end up losing productivity if you speak fast. Your time will be spent going back and correcting all the errors…so avoid it.

Spell that: There may be instances where the word you are trying to speak is complicated or has a unique spelling. In that case, It is always a good idea to speak out each letter of the word. For example, The speech to text software has a good chance of picking up the word phlebolithic wrong. It is advised to spell the letters in such scenarios. P-H-L-E-B-O-L-I-T-H-I-C

Use Good Microphone: Without a good microphone, there is nothing to say. Hardware is an important element that affects the quality of your dictation. Invest in a good microphone!

Let it get used to you: The more you work with the speech engine, the better it gets. You need to give it time. And you need to correct so that it can recognize your accent. Give it some time and you will see a gradual improvement in your dictation.

Medical Dictation has been on the rise and it is imperative that user of it get comfortable cause they would spending a lot of time on it to save lots of time taking care of patients.

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