Electronic documentation tips for physicians.

Another excellent post on text expansion from Lifehacker

emrdoc — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:29:44 +0000

How to use text expansion to save yourself hours of typing every day

Thanks Lifehacker!

Dragon Medical Mobile Apps for smartphones coming….

emrdoc — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:28:00 +0000

In my January 15th post, I pondered a time in the “not-too-distant future” when useful speech recognition would be available to iPhone, and other smartphone, users. Looks like it will be in 2010!

Read about:
Dragon Medical Mobile Dictation
Dragon Medical Mobile Search
Dragon Medical Mobile Recorder

http://www.nuance.com/news/pressreleases/2010/20100301_dragon-medical-mobile.asp

http://www.nuance.com/healthcare/products/dragon-medical-mobile.asp

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/01/encouraged-by-iphone-market-nuance-announces-new-medical-apps/

Dragon Naturally Speaking Webinars at Nuance.com

emrdoc — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:50:59 +0000

You can register for free webinars covering introductory and advanced DNS topics here:

http://www.nuance.com/news/webinars/

Dragon 101
Thursday, February 18, 2010 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST

Dragon 201
Thursday, February 25, 2010 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EST

Dragon Medical 10 Overview is available as a replay here:

http://www.nuance.com/news/webinars/DragonReplays/

I haven’t been able to get the replays to work from inside my corporate firewall, so I will schedule these as 3 hours of CME (Personal Learning Project = speech recognition) from home.

iPad

emrdoc — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:02:56 +0000

January 27 finally arrived and the iPad was revealed to the world. Like any good tech enthusiast, I followed the rumors and build up with much anticipation. And now the pundits have their say until the general public gets its turn in late March. See opinion pieces written by David Pogue and Walt Mossberg.

Although many are disappointed by features that didn’t make it into iPad 1.0, I am not. Apple has done the smart thing by releasing a product with very little new hardware or software. Although this is the first version of the iPad, we can expect it to “just work” because it is based on proven technology. The first time I used my iPod touch two years ago, and realized what it could do, my first thought was “Wouldn’t it be great if it was just bigger?”. And now it is.

This is the closest thing to an “Internet appliance” that I have seen. If only it was available a year ago when I tried setting my mother up with her laptop. She would have been better served with an iPad and keyboard.

Whether this will be useful in my practice or not remains to be seen. Over the next year, I need to see a few developments:

Our local cellular providers need to upgrade to 3G or 3.5G to make “anywhere wireless” a usable proposition.
Our local hospital needs to upgrade Citrix access to Meditech to support Citrix Receiver for the iPhone / iPad.
Nuance will need to build on the capabilities of Dragon Dictate for the iPhone / iPad.
I need to be able to read my vast library of PDF articles and e-books on the iPad, with software that allows me to annotate and highlight as I go.

If these developments come to pass, the iPad will be able to replace my tablet PC in my briefcase.

What developments will be revealed with iPhone 4.0 and iPad 2.0?

This is the start of something big. Whether future improvements in design, stability, and usability come from Apple, or Apple’s competitors, they will come. That’s a good thing for everyone.

Speech recognition on Google Nexus One phone

emrdoc — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:06:58 +0000

This won’t be available in Canada until the Google Phone comes to Canada, but it also looks very interesting.

Speech recognition works the same way as the Dragon App on the iPhone… remote recognition in the cloud… but is more smoothly integrated.

Rather than the clumsy process of opening a separate application, then copying and pasting text, you just start dictating directly into the field where the cursor is flashing. I agree with the reviewer at the link below — ease of use and integration are just as important as accuracy.

Read about Nexus One here.

Read one review of its speech recognition here.

Some users discuss here.

Dragon Dictate for iPhone now available in Canada!

emrdoc — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:37:50 +0000

See the product page at Nuance here.

Read one review here. If you Google or search YouTube for “Dragon Dictate iPhone” you will get more reviews and videos.

I am fascinated by this product because it moves the heavy lifting of speech recognition from a user’s local device and hardware set-up to a remote system. My iPhone is really just a wireless microphone for Nuance’s recognition supercomputer; presumably located in Burlington, Massachusetts.

This offloads the processing power requirement for speech recognition to a remote computer configured with optimal hardware, software, and voice training data… and someone else is performs all the maintenance and upgrades!

The way it is now, I have to configure each of my computers’ hardware, software, and training myself. The vocabulary and voice training I accumulate on one installation (my laptop) cannot easily be transferred to another installation (my desktop).

Is this the first step toward “cloud” speech recognition? I think so.

In the not-too-distant future, I expect I will be paying an annual fee to access Nuance’s remote recognition “supercomputer” where my latest vocabulary and recognition files reside. I will be able to use them from any smartphone, PC, or Mac with a microphone and sufficient bandwidth… from anywhere in the world.

Like all cloud based services, there will be privacy concerns. But after spending a few minutes getting instant results from my iPhone that used to take hours to achieve with a desktop setup, I’m a believer.

New EMR Adopter Funding

emrdoc — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:18:29 +0000

“New EMR Adopter funding is intended to promote and enable physician office transformation from paper-based to electronic medical records increasing timely access to patient information when and where it is needed. The funding will include both one-time payments and monthly subsidies, as detailed below to support physicians with associated costs incurred over a 3-year period. In addition to EMR funding, the program also includes transition support services to assist physician practices in the necessary organizational changes when advancing information technology. These services are provided by OntarioMD at no cost to program participants.”

Excellent news. Read all about it here at OntarioMD

PubMed® Now Using the Redesigned Interface

emrdoc — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:40:51 +0000

I knew this was coming, but found the new interface jarring when I initiated a search today. Check it out:

You can read the technical bulletin here.

From NYMC Health Sciences Library post:

“Overall it appears that the National Library of Medicine, which produces PubMed, is looking for a cleaner more intuitive design. Searchers are presented with a Google-like search box and results are presented on an uncluttered screen. Instead of tabs for various filters and limits, filters and other options appear on the right side of the results screen. And some other regularly used features like Details and Limits can be found on the Advanced Search page.

As with any interface design change there will be some things to get used to. The links to full text are now at the bottom of the record or on the upper right of the screen, and some things just look different.”

The online tutorials are being updated to reflect the changes.

Sounds like a Personal Learning Project (PLP) to me.

Rotate your tablet display using hot keys

emrdoc — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:07:48 +0000

Using the following key combinations to rotate your display quickly:

CTRL+ALT+Right Arrow = clockwise 90 degrees

CTRL+ALT+Left Arrow = counter clockwise 90 degrees

CTRL+ALT+Down Arrow = upside down (180 degrees)

CTRL+ALT+Up Arrow = right side up

Apparently this works in XP, and I am using it in Windows 7.

Beyond Talk: Voice Recognition On Deadline

emrdoc — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:49:20 +0000

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2009/08/beyond_talk_voice_recognition.html?ps=rs