Philips SpeechMagic Enters One of the World’s Largest Medical Speech Projects

Ulleval University Hospital in Oslo, Norway’s largest clinical center, will roll out Royal Philips Electronics' SpeechMagic to more than 1,000 physicians across all medical specialties. When completed at the beginning of 2009, the implementation is expected to be the world’s largest deployment of front-end speech recognition at one single hospital site.

"We see patient safety as the most important advantage of this technology", said Jens Grøgaard, Ulleval University Hospital’s clinical manager. "Every department will have full access to critical patient information, which helps to significantly improve the quality of care. Since the report is printed instantly, the entire team involved in delivering care to a patient can rely on accurate, written information."

The hospital-wide deal, which came through the local Philips Speech Recognition Systems partner Max Manus, was triggered by a successful implementation in Ulleval’s radiology department, where report turnaround time was reduced by 96 percent.  

"We are expecting to save tens of millions of Norwegian crowns  each year thanks to more accurate, convenient, and efficient information capturing. By allowing our physicians to directly dictate into the electronic medical record, the entire hospital will benefit from a streamlined flow of information," highlighted project manager Andreas Atteraas Grønbekk.

"Norway is probably the world’s most advanced country regarding the adoption of speech recognition-based information capturing in healthcare. The scale of this latest deployment proves that speech recognition-based information capturing in electronic health records has become a reality and the verbal interaction between physicians and IT systems can help reduce adoption barriers," said Björn Aune, sales director Nordics for Philips Speech Recognition Systems.