About Dr Andrew Brewster

Dr Brewster first became a Dragon user and VoicePower client at his previous Partnership, a GP practice in Reading that had 20,000 patients and 60 staff.

However, this year, he relocated to The Downland Practice to become a Retainer GP. Based in rural Newbury, the practice has forty staff, six GP partners three salaried partners, one GP Retainer and two GP Registrars.

There are 11,000 patients at the practice, 1,300 of which Dr Brewster is responsible.

Join us as Dr Brewster shares his experience going from classic transcription to real-time medical speech recognition and taking Dragon with him in his new role.

Secretarial Strain

At his first practice, Andrew and his colleagues were using cassette tapes (yikes!) and then moved over to SpeechExec and Lexacom digital dictation software.

A traditional method of dictating into a voice recorder and the secretary typing it up manually, this is still a popular reporting workflow in the healthcare sector.

“We were having to dictate, then read through secretarially-typed letters and check for errors, highlighting corrections, before re-typing the corrected letters, re-printing before signing.” – Dr Andrew Brewster

For Andrew, this method was not a good use of secretarial time, nor was it effective:

“This was not a good use of clinical time – Having to read letters, make corrections and then re-read the letters. This cumbersome method also increased the secretarial workload and caused unnecessary printing costs.” – Dr Andrew Brewster

The ineffective process wasn’t the only problem with the digital dictation workflow, Andrew also found that there were “occasional problems with loss of digitally dictated transcripts due to IT issues.”

When asked what the main challenge was for him and his previous employer that led to them looking for another workflow, Andrew explained:

“The practice needed to better utilise secretarial time, repurposing their role to Personal Assistants to deal with increasing numbers of patient queries.” – Dr Andrew Brewster

Unleashing Their VoicePower

Deciding that enough was enough, a Partner at Andrew’s old practice suggested Dragon Medical One.

As a Dragon reseller and Nuance/Microsoft Premier Partner, the team turned to VoicePower Ltd to guide and support them through exploring real-time speech recognition.

Providing the licenses, Dragon training and technical support, VoicePower were the one-stop-shop that Andrew and his team needed. But how did they find the new software?

“DMO has become an indispensable tool which has considerably increased my productivity and efficacy; It has increased my job satisfaction and work-life as a GP.” – Dr Andrew Brewster

Using Dragon to dictate consultations, practice notes, screen messages, referral letters and patient correspondence including messages and resources sent to patients via AccuRx text and email, Andrew says “Dragon is by far the most helpful intervention I have come across in over 20 years working as a GP, a real game-changer! I would not practice as a GP without it!”

It isn’t just Andrew who has been impressed with speech recognition: “There is now no delay in patient letters, all of them are dictated and sent on the same day. Practice staff and secretaries are very pleased with quick and comprehensive responses to tasks.” – Dr Andrew Brewster

The benefits don’t stop there, though:

“Dragon has made a huge difference to my job satisfaction and time management. My consultation notes are more comprehensive as I am no longer frantically typing my notes between patients. I can dictate directly onto EMIS which is much, much faster. Having full and comprehensive patient notes has medico-legal implications of course, and one of the many reasons that I would not revert to typing.”

Onto Pastures New

In 2023 Dr Andrew Brewster was ready for a new challenge, accepting a new position at The Downland Practice in Chievelry… On one condition: Dragon must come with him!

“Following my very positive experience of using Dragon Medical One at my old practice, the use of Dragon Medical One was a pre-requisite that I insisted on when joining my new practice. I am pleased to say that my new practice agreed to fund DMO, so I agreed to join their team.”

Andrew’s trusted supplier, VoicePower Ltd, assisted him along the way, which he explains was extremely helpful:

“Voicepower were very helpful in the transition from my old practice to my new one. They helped move my account and transferred all of my vocabulary files, auto-text files, and step-by-step command files to my new DMO account.” – Dr Andrew Brewster

Most importantly, Andrew explains the impact that speech recognition has had on his patients:

“My patients very much appreciate the many resources I can send them via email and text, which I have collated over the last few years and saved as autotexts.”

The Key to Success

As with any technology rollout, support from industry experts is key, and this was no different for Dr Andrew Brewster.

“VoicePower provided a very helpful basic training session. Once I was aware of the potential of DMO to interact with the EMIS interface, I was keen to learn how to program DMO myself to ensure I could obtain the most productivity gains and patient gains.”

Furthermore, having the VoicePower team to go to with any questions or queries has been extremely valuable for Andrew:

“VoicePower’s technical support is superb. They have helped with the transition and a couple of minor technical queries. All interactions I have had with VoicePower have been extremely positive. Any queries or problems have been quickly dealt with and resolved.” – Dr Andrew Brewster