BigHand Releases Version 4.5 of Its Dictation Software

BigHand, a provider of digital dictation workflow solutions, this week released BigHand 4.5, enhancing the capabilities of its core enterprise software.

The newly released solution is set to evolve the firm's business processes as it has been specifically developed to help boost productivity and efficiency for users through usability improvements.

"We're always looking to evolve and adapt our technology to suit the needs of our users. The enhancements within this release are designed to streamline processes, give more visibility of workloads, and improve overall usability to help professionals get more done, crucially saving time, resources, and money," said Tom Spelling, products manager at BigHand, in a statement. "Our technology is developed in line with the fast-moving needs and expectations of businesses and our customers in both the public and private sectors and ultimately save costs on core processes. We're confident that these improvements will go even further in minimizing onerous administrative processes that users don't have the time or resource for."

BigHand 4.5 promises to enhance speech recognition accuracy, expand mobile working options, and improve the visibility and manageability of workloads through the inclusion of the following features:

• Enhanced Audio Codec, resulting in greatly improved audio on playback, improved speech recognition accuracy, and further optimizations for Citrix and Terminal Services.
• Audio Calibration Wizard, enabling users to calibrate their dictation microphone for optimum audio levels when recording and playing back dictations.
• BigHand Go for iPad, a digital dictation application designed specifically for iPad, enables users to record dictations and send for transcription while on-the-go.
• Smart Router, an application that allows dictations to be routed automatically to different areas of an organization based on certain criteria, for example shorter dictations can be automatically sent for transcription or sent to speech recognition.
• Work Overview, providing a summary of pending, in-progress, and complete dictations. Users can identify the total number of dictations at each stage.
• Profiling & Workflow, as additional columns within the work in progress window allow users to customize data to find and prioritize work.

BigHand 4.5 has been in beta with a number of BigHand clients, including Law firm Leigh Day.

"The BigHand team and software never cease to amaze, and 4.5 is no exception. The changes to the interface in 4.5 really help authors/transcribers, and the improved speech quality delivered by the new codec is also a step change," said James Harrison, head of IT at Leigh Day, in a statement. "The legal market is changing and becoming even more competitive. To stay ahead, we are always looking for efficiency improvements and performance gains in order to increase productivity. BigHand 4.5 makes this happen."