Genesis Technologies Offering Dragon Medical 10.1

Genesis Technologies—an authorized academic software reseller—is now offering Dragon Medical 10.1, Nuance Communications’ speech recognition and dictation software solution for physicians.

The solution is aimed at increasing quality of patient care by expediting record keeping and distribution while cutting operational costs via the creation of electronic medical records (EMRs).

Dragon Medical—which is used by more than 100,000 physicians in the Unites States—helps eliminate transcription costs by enabling providers to dictate directly into the EMR.  The solution also aids medical practices implement EMR systems by allowing clinicians to navigate an EMR by voice.

Christine D. Chang, healthcare technology analyst at Ovum, says the speech recognition market in healthcare is currently experiencing significant growth due to $46 billion set aside in the federal stimulus bill passed earlier this year for the adoption of healthcare technology.

According to a statement from Genesis Technologies, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, $17.2 billion will be distributed in incentive payments to eligible healthcare professionals for EMR adoption between 2011 and 2016.  Medical professionals implementing EMR are eligible to receive incentives while clinicians who fail to adopt EMR by 2014 will be penalized.

“As healthcare providers are scrambling to install EHRs by 2011, and show that they are using EHRs in a meaningful way (definitions of meaningful use are pending), physicians and EHR vendors have realized that speech recognition dramatically helps increase the adoption of EHRs,” Chang writes in an email to Speech Technology. 

Agreeing with Chang’s assessment is Keith Belton, senior director of solutions marketing for Dragon Medical at Nuance.  He says Nuance has seen a significant increase in interest in Dragon Medical since the passage of the ARRA.

“We are seeing a lot of activity particularly in the midsize practices—the 10 to 50 doctor practice size,” Belton says. “We’re seeing a lot of interest.”

Belton estimates that currently less than 10 percent of all physicians in the United States document care in electronic health records—a number he says could jump to more than 20 percent by the end of year.