Have you ever wondered how speech recognition technology in healthcare can transform your business in a beautiful way?
What if it didn’t have to be that way? Instead of doing a big ordeal – with a doctor’s appointment, waiting in a queue, driving to the chemists, climbing to bed completely exhausted in the end – you could get the medical care needed from your own bedroom coziness?
We are witnessing something profound now. The radical transformation of the way we perceive the entire healthcare journey, and it all comes down to something we use on our daily basis, something that we are born with – our voices.
Due to advances in computer power and AI and natural language processing and understanding technologies we can use our voices and computers can understand what we are saying. We are no longer adapting to computers, the computers are adapting to us.
Voice is efficient, it saves our time. With the help of our voices we can do multitasks, using voice when driving, bathing kids, cooking, etc. Imagine yourself typing, texting, swiping while operating a motor vehicle?
And because it is so compelling we are seeing massive adoption of medical speech recognition software. In fact, devices like this are being adopted a way faster than any consumer technology in our history including the mobile phones! It is especially interesting with kids and eldery people, there is essentially no new technology to learn. If you know how to speak you can use the device.
We would like to invite you to the inspiring Tedy Fisher’s speech on TED Talks on the benefits of voice recognition software. You will definitely enjoy and get motivated!
Brand New Ways For Care Delivery
One area that is being PROFOUNDLY changed is Healthcare. And it is truly fascinating. We are exhumed going to be living in a world of ambient computing. These devices are going to be around listening to what we are saying and being able to respond to us in an intelligent and personal way. We are going to have AI healthcare teams living in our homes.
Let’s say you are home making a salad and you are chopping a nice fresh crunchy cucumber. Chop-chop… you slip and cut your finger. It is not easy to run around digging out your first aid when bleeding. But what if you just had a device and say: “Hey I cut my finger, what do I do?”. And it tells you what to do. The same thing, of course, would apply to other first aid scenarios – insect stings, burns, etc. This can provide you with the information you need. Rapidly. Seamlessly.
Or another example. Imagine you have an aging parent who would like to maintain their independence and live on their own. But they are becoming forgetful, and starting to experience a sense of isolation. How can speech recognition in healthcare help that person? Imagine the device would know when they woke up and say: “Good morning, how did you sleep?” And it would capture that response and, perhaps, share that data with the family, or with the healthcare provider? And it would be their guide through the day with “It’s time for your medication. This is the dose, these are the pills you need, and do not forget about today’s appointments. If you forget, I will remind you later on”. It basically is acting as a care aid for that person, and what is more, it can also be a source of companionship.
There are some studies showing that having such a device at home actually decreases loneliness, and increases a sense of well-being. Imagine if this device can help that person to maintain their independence and live in their home alone that much longer.
One more scenario. What about people with chronic diseases like diabetes, or those that have just come home after hospital after a hip replacement? How can it help those people? Well, these are the conditions the person lives with 24 a day seven days a week but they only get to see their provider just a fraction of that time. What if the device was a surrogate for that physician? Somebody that you could ask questions to? And get responses about your concerns on your particular condition. The device that could guide you through your care and help to optimize it.
What is more interesting is that the device can start to learn about your normal patterns, and alert you if things are going off track. The device could also be proactive and detect when there was a problem, and alert you to get the medical care before there was a serious issue. We are seeing it is already happening today.
There is one more fascinating thing about voice recognition software in healthcare we want to mention. The best way to explain this is to think about the analogy with digital photography. When you take a photograph, in addition to hopefully catching a beautiful photo, you also capture metadata – what camera you used, the aperture and shutter speed setting, ISO number, GPS coordinates, etc. With voice you can capture the similar data that is typically known as vocal biomarkers.
When a child comes home from school, and you ask “How was school today?”, and he/she answers “It was Great!”, that has one meaning. And the next day the reply may be just “It-was-great” in a different tone. The exact same words have completely different meanings. Describing these differences in terms of rhythm, frequency, intencity, pitch, the AI drags out the patterns and identifies significant changes like mood shifts, depression, cognitive decline as a result of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s. In fact, the studies proved statistically meaningful correlation between the way somebody speaks and the risk of coronary artery disease, or a heart failure, etc.
Currently doctors use vital signs like heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory, temperature as key indicators of heart status. And we are moving to an era where voice can be the most valuable sign. It is non-invasive and you just speak.
Potential limitations in effective voice recognition
Of course, voice technology in healthcare can have some functioning imperfections, and we will try to mention each of them.
First of all, voice dictation may be inaccurate which results in malpractice, wrong diagnosis and treatment. Then, the additional background noises do not make it easier to recognize patients’ speech, that is why some effort is needed to talk softly and distinctly.
No doubt, language is very personal and dialects instead of literary speech can be an obstacle for effective recognition. But the most serious issue is when a patient refuses to be recorded because of some privacy fears or irrelevant beliefs and attitude to technology innovations.
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All in all, voice technology helps to spot health problems faster and have more chances for curing. The software also simplifies communication barriers by online calls, virtual visits, or consultation search. Our team is happy to provide more information on how to introduce voice tech in your business. Leave us a message right now! Have a great day!
