Army rolls out speech recognition

The Army Medical Department is rolling out speech recognition technology in a big way as part of an effort to boost its clinicians' satisfaction with the military's electronic medical record system. The new system will allow physicians to speak their notes into the EMR at the patient's bedside, rather than enter them later when their memories aren't as fresh.

The Army is rolling out Dragon Medical speech recognition software to 90,000 clinicians worldwide. It's taking this step as part of a larger program, run by the U.S. Army Surgeon General, designed to help improve providers' experience with AHLTA, the military's EMR.  The program, MEDCOM AHLTA Provider Satisfaction, has already invested in touch-screen laptop computers and wireless networks.

Now, the question is when the Department of Defense can meet its larger goal of integrating AHTLA with the VA's medical record system, VistA. When we last checked in in early 2008, the two sides were far from having established full interoperability between the two EMR systems, a goal DoD is required by law to meet by September 30, 2009.

To learn more about this initiative:
- read this Healthcare IT News piece

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DoD makes progress in VA EMR integration
Bureaucracy holds up military EMR deployment