Medical Transcription Meets Voice Recognition

For years transcriptionists heard rumors that voice recognition software would put them out of a job. Transcriptionists would join the ranks of blacksmiths and milkmaids, their profession made obsolete by technology.

I scoffed at this idea. Maybe voice recognition would work, but only for those people willing to "train" their software to recognize their speech and who spoke clearly and distinctly. This clearly placed doctors out of the picture. Speak clearly? I laughed at the very idea.

Yes, voice recognition in the medical transcription field has indeed become a reality. Doctors sputter and mangle their dictation into the phones as usual, but software now translates this into English words.

So what has become of the long-suffering transcriptionist? Now renamed "medical editors," we watch the words go by, correcting the software's errors and adding a comma here, a period there.

Sure, human beings are still needed. You see, when the doctor corrects himself or asks the transcriber to go back to a previous section and insert more text, software doesn't know how to do that. A person does.

The biggest change for the medical transcri..., er editor, is that across the board in the industry, editors are being paid less for their work than before. Presumably this is because editing is easier and faster than transcribing. Well, it can be, but there is still a lot of correcting to do. A 20% to 30% pay cut is hard to swallow when nearly as much time is spent on the job.

Less strain on the body is another benefit claimed. Yes, that's true, but still as much time is spent sitting motionless in a chair, staring at a computer screen.

Let's not forget our friends, the doctors who speak English as their second, third, or even fourth language--those with an accent so thick even the voice recognition software can't recognize it. It's easier just to type what these guys are trying to say than to correct what the computer interpreted.