About One Health Group

One Health Group is a private healthcare organisation that provides NHS services for patients referred for treatment in Orthopaedics, Spine, General Surgery and Gynaecology.

Consisting of 30 contracted employees, 70+ sub-contracted surgeons, and over 30 outpatient clinics, One Health Group specialise in providing faster, local, expert care for patients who may otherwise have long waits for treatment.

One Health Group approached VoicePower Ltd in 2019, looking for a new way to create their clinical documentation. We caught up with IT Manager, Forrest Burgin and IT Support Technician, Thomas Allsopp to get their perspective on how speech recognition has impacted their organisation.

Transcription Can’t Meet Reporting Demand

Prior to working with VoicePower Ltd, One Health Group were using a more traditional method of dictaphones and transcription to capture their clinical documentation. The consultants would record their notes with a voice recorder and then email them to either in-house or outsourced transcriptionists for typing.

However, eventually, the team realised that this workflow was flawed and not as efficient as it could be.

Furthermore, Thomas explained that notes and letters often had a turnaround time of multiple days, adding a significant delay from the end of a clinic to the information being sent to GPs.

It seems duplication wasn’t the only issue that the organisation experienced with dictation:

It was for these reasons that One Health Group decided that it was time to look for a new documentation method, and that’s when they came across VoicePower Ltd.

As specialists in digital dictation and speech recognition workflows, and due to their wide range of experience within the NHS and other medical organisations, VoicePower Ltd was perfect for the job.

After a discovery meeting and discussions regarding what requirements their new solution needed to meet and what the team wanted it to achieve, VoicePower had the perfect solution in mind for One Health Group: Nuance Dragon Medical One.

Rolling out Dragon Medical One

Dragon Medical One is Nuance Communication’s cloud-based medical speech recognition software. Unlike previous versions, Dragon Medical One allows for flexible use that isn’t restricted to one PC. Furthermore, it is licenced via an annual subscription which is appealing to medical sites as they have the option to renew every 12 months.

Most importantly, Nuance Dragon Medical One has an in-built medical vocabulary, which VoicePower knew would be extremely beneficial for One Health Group’s frequently used Orthopaedic and Gynaecology terminology.

Dragon Medical One’s technology means that it in works real-time, meaning users can speak directly into their computer, using a noise-cancelling microphone, and see the results instantaneously.

However, it’s not all unicorns and roses, people looking into any kind of new technology often have reservations, and One Health Group were no different.

Thomas went on to explain that “users that were not familiar with such systems found Dragon to be cumbersome and were unhappy with the additional responsibility of correcting and formatting their own work.”

By means of explanation, Dragon learns voice patterns and the more it is used, the more accurate it becomes. However, if a misrecognition error does occur, users are encouraged to amend them on the spot using the “Correct [insert word]” command. Once corrected, Dragon retains this correction and will never make the same mistake again.

For One Health Group’s surgeons, who were used to transcription and the admin, corrections and proofreading being done by someone else, using Dragon was always going to be an adjustment.

It was during times like these that being supported through VoicePower’s technical support package and attending their personalised training was pivotal. Not only were the Dragon experts able to explain the process of correcting to the team, but they were also there to support them if any issues arose.

VoicePower being there through every step meant that the surgeons had the best possible chance of reducing the number of misrecognitions that appeared but also gave them the knowledge and power to resolve quickly and efficiently.

Reduced Admin Costs and Time Saved in Clinic!

We’ve heard about the journey, but what about the real reason you’re reading this page… The results!

Well, as it stands 51 of One Health Group’s surgeons are successfully using Nuance Dragon Medical One. With regards to some of the surgeon’s teething problems at the start of the roll-out, Thomas confirmed:

Most importantly, the entire site has been able to identify multiple trackable return on investments since swapping typing for speech recognition:

“Dragon has reduced our typing and admin costs, saved consultants time in the clinic, and resulted in more immediately available and auditable dictations. It has also eliminated the need for our clinical services team to proofread letters.” – Thomas Allsopp, IT Support Technician

It’s evident that One Health Group are impressed with the software, with all users” positively commented on the speed and accuracy of the speech recognition” but what about the journey as a whole?

When asked about the deployment process, IT Manager, Forrest Burgin explained:

“The transition from old to new was seamless, from a technical perspective, and the technical support is 10/10!” – Forrest Burgin, IT Manager

Watch this short demonstration video here: