AssistMed Adds Voice Security Layer to Medical Services

AssistMed, a Los Angeles-based IT company that provides solutions for physicians and healthcare organizations, has added VoiceVault’s Caller Authentication service to its DictAide product.

A physician or company using DictAide, a transcription program, must now enter a voice signature before being granted entry into the system. AssistMed sees the biometrics addition to its service as a step in the right direction toward complying with government mandates that all health records be in electronic format by 2014.

Raul Kivatinetz, chief operating officer and president of AssistMed, explains that his company chose to add biometrics to its services, as healthcare organizations and physicians must not only keep their records electronic, but also secure. "Security is always a problem with the [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)] compliance," he says. Further, the company plans to add VoiceVault’s services to its cadre of other healthcare-related services within the next six months.
 
Kivatinetz says his company has also made efforts to bolster its speech recognition engine in recent years, including both auto-formatting and auto-correction. The move to also add biometrics to its services could be seen as a move to compete with Nuance-owned Dictaphone, which Kivatinetz says does not currently have a voice-enabled security system.
 
VoiceVault’s services will be automatically added to all its users accounts over the next few months.