Amalga and speech recognition

Microsoft is to offer speech recognition with its Amalga hospital information, radiology and digital imaging systems.

The company announced a deal with Royal Philips Electronics in September to integrate its SpeechMagic technology into Amalga.

The Dutch company subsequently sold its speech recognition business to the US firm Nuance. But the licensing deal is still going ahead.

Speech recognition is widely used in some hospital departments, such as radiology, where it allows clinicians to dictate reports directly into a computer, so they don’t need to be sent for typing. This saves time and cuts errors.

SpeechMagic is widely regarded as being at the cutting edge of speech recognition technology. Microsoft Amalga, meanwhile, is a “unified intelligence system” that captures data and turns it into useful knowledge.

Amalga HIS is built around an electronic health record and includes complete patient and bed management as well as an integrated radiology information system and a digital imaging system (picture archive and communications, or PACS).

In a statement, Steve Shihadeh, vice president, Microsoft Health Solutions Group, said the link-up would make data capture easier and more intuitive.

“Ensuring seamless information sharing across the enterprise requires that input from various departments and sources, such as medical notes, discharge summaries or ward visits, is captured and stored in a standardised format,” he said.

“SpeechMagic’s advanced technology and ongoing research will allow us to quickly bring advanced information capture to Amalga HIS and Amalga RIS/PACS customers around the globe.” Microsoft has already started to integrate the speech recognition technology into Amalga.