Can Voice Recognition Technologies Make Transcription Services Redundant?

Many businesses need to convert recorded voice to text and have long been looking for ways to do it quickly and inexpensively. Transcribing medical dictation is a prime example.

Some years ago, when voice recognition software became commercially available, most people expected that the solution had finally arrived. Businesses looked forward to cutting down on transcription costs and everyone who hated typing looked forward to getting rid of their keyboard.

Unfortunately, the reality turned out to be rather different. Voice-to-text technology has been a big let down so far.

The fact is, voice recognition software is easily thrown off track by many different factors. If you don’t speak clearly and distinctly, it may not give you the right output. If you try using it in a noisy place, it will fail more often than not. If you have an accent, it may not understand you. Even if you have a bad cold, you’ll find that the software may give incorrect results!

In other words, voice recognition software works reasonably well under ideal, laboratory conditions, but not in a typical home or business setting!

Healthcare professionals who attempted to use voice recognition technologies to eliminate transcription services found that they need to “train” the software to function well. That takes a long time and a lot of work. Most wound up continuing to outsource their medical transcription work.

Of course, there are many other types of situations where transcription is needed. Examples include recordings of seminars, teleconferences, interviews and classes that need to be converted to text.

In natural speech, people tend to use lots of “aahs” and “umms” as well as unnecessary phrases like “you know”. Current voice recognition technology is just not capable of filtering out such irrelevant sounds or words.

In addition, people also string together several sentences using “ands”. The software can’t break up such speech into meaningful sentences. Nor can it break up speech into meaningful paragraph units the way a transcriptionist can.

And if the recording is filled with background noise, or if more than one person is talking at the same time, the software will not function reliably and consistently.

Maybe sometime in the future someone will invent voice recognition technology that can handle all the above issues. Till then businesses will need to use transcription services, particularly for work like medical transcription, where accuracy is critical.

About the Author:

John Travers is a business consultant who provides information at http://www.business-transcription-guide.info/ and http://www.business-transcription-guide.info/transcription-and-your-business.html about business transcription services including medical transcription.

Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Finding Affordable Transcription

You may have been conducting research interviews, focus groups, market research, but whatever your reason for recording conversations you’ll be looking for an affordable transcription service. There are many transcription services available but sometimes an affordable transcription service can seem hard to find. Transcription is not cheap, because it is a lot more involved than copy typing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find an affordable transcription service, and by providing good quality recordings you can make the transcription more affordable, as it will take less time to complete.

You may have planned to do the transcription yourself, but if you are not a fast touch-typist and do not have specialist transcription equipment then you have probably now realised that it’s going to take you a very long time. I have had clients come to me saying it was taking them 20 hours to produce a transcript of a 1-hour recording. That’s why they ended up using a transcription service!

The most important thing to remember is that it’s just not possible to type as fast as you speak. Even an experienced transcriptionist will be able to average four times as long for a good, clear one-to-one interview – so an hour of recording will take an average of four hours to transcribe. A focus group may take six hours or more per hour of recording. (Industry standards obtained from the Industry Production Standards Guide (I998), published by OBC, Columbus, OH, USA) Transcriptionists also have to make sense of what’s being said, punctuate the speech correctly and use the right homophones (words like there/their/they’re that sound the same but are spelt differently.)

So how can you make sure that your transcript is clear, in order to get an affordable transcription price? Basically, the easier you make the transcription for the transcriptionist, the more likely they are to be able to give you an affordable transcription quote.

First of all, use the best recording equipment you can afford, and make sure it’s fit for purpose. This means that for interviews you should record with an external microphone rather than one built into the recorder, which is only designed to pick up one voice dictating. For focus groups you should have several microphones so that all participants are close to a mike.

If you’re conducting interviews then, if at all possible, conduct them in a quiet room, as background noise will dramatically increase the time taken to transcribe the recording, as the transcriptionist may have to listen to sections several times in order to capture the interview speech. It is helpful to spell out your interviewee’s name at the beginning of the tape, before starting the interview, and speak out any information you would like on the transcript header e.g. the date, the job title of your interviewee etc. You may also want to conduct a ‘debrief’ session at the end of the recording, when you are alone, in order to quickly record your impressions of the interview. For research interviews this is often part of the methodology.

Focus group transcription will cost more than a one-to-one interview transcript, but you can still get an affordable transcription service if you work to make your recording as clear as possible. Again make sure the recording is conducted in a private quiet room. Air conditioning can affect a recording, but so can opening a window, so if it’s a hot day it’s worth making a couple of test recordings before you start to see if there are problems! It’s really important to firmly chair a focus group too. Remind all the participants that all their views are valid, there are no rights and wrongs and, while you’re interested to see if they agree or disagree with each other, they should try not to talk (or shout!) over each other to make their point. Saying this at the beginning is important but it’s even more important, if you want affordable transcription, to remind participants each time things start getting a bit ‘out of hand’ that they need to speak separately for the sake of the recording. Finding the balance here between letting the talk flow and making sure you get a good recording is quite an art!

Conference recording is best left to the professionals if possible! Often these days a venue will provide recording facilities of good quality, included in the price. A microphone needs to be set up for the speaker and there should also be people in the audience with ‘roving’ microphones to take around to any audience members wanting to ask a question.

Digital recording systems provide the best quality and many transcriptionists only work with digital now, so if you want to give yourself the widest field then it’s certainly worth considering digital.

Any information you can provide to the transcriptionist about your recording will help, and may help toward an affordable transcription service. For example a list of key words will reduce the time spent ‘Googleing’, searching the internet to find out how to spell technical terms, names of organisations etc. If you can provide this info it certainly saves time, and saving time saves you money, again reaching toward that goal of an affordable transcription service. Technical work will always be more expensive than non-technical, but providing a ‘crib sheet’ of key words should reduce the cost.

Most transcriptionists work in a standard format, whether that be tabular, tabbed, interviews shown as initials or full names etc. Again most are happy to work to your specifications, but the standard format might well be cheaper, so think carefully about whether you need something different or not. Find out what the standard format is in advance if it concerns you, and you may be able to adapt it to your needs. If, for instance, it’s essential that you have speakers in different fonts or different colours, this will add to the price. It might be more cost-effective for you to put this in when the basic transcript is returned to you!

Finally, give some serious thought to whether or not you need a verbatim transcription. Verbatim transcription includes every repeated word, every ‘um’ and ‘erm’, all those ‘filler’ phrases like ‘you know’ and ‘know what I mean’ that may be repeated a hundred times in one interview, and can also include pauses, coughs, throat clearing etc. if required. Needless to say if this takes longer. If the transcriptionist can filter out all this stuff the transcript is quicker. In my company the cheapest level is what we call ‘intelligent verbatim’ which cuts out all these fillers but leaves the rest exactly as it’s spoken. Different transcriptionists work this differently though, so always check when you’re phoning for your quote. Here are some brief examples. Somewhat more expensive is edited, which corrects the grammar and any mispronounced words as well as knocking out all the fillers.

Verbatim

So, anyway, you know, I said …er, ‘Well, Susan, I really think you, you shouldn’t be um asking, er, me that.’ And she, erm, er, she, she, well, she said, ‘Look Mark, I dunno what you mean,’ know what I mean?

Intelligent Verbatim

So anyway I said, ‘Well, Susan, I really think you shouldn’t be asking me that.’ And she said, ‘Look Mark, I dunno what you mean.’

Edited

So I said, ‘Well, Susan, I really think you shouldn’t be asking me that.’ And she said, ‘Look Mark, I don’t know what you mean.’

You can see that a whole extra line of typing is required for the verbatim work in just those two sentences.

There are occasions when verbatim is required – depending on your topic it might be required for legal reasons, or you might be studying the language itself and the way it’s used. But if you really don’t need it, don’t end up paying for it!

There are many excellent reasons for interviewing groups of people, but don’t do this in order to try to reduce the transcription cost! As already stated, it takes much longer to transcribe a group of more than two or three people (including the moderator/interviewer) because of the time taken to distinguish the different voices and the fact that people will inevitably talk over each other, especially when they get excited, enthusiastic, impassioned or angry.

And finally, remember that the cheapest transcription quote might not be the most affordable one in the end. There is an oft-quoted phrase: if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Will it really be cost-effective to send your hard-won interviews to the cheapest service if what comes back is gobbledygook and you have to go through the whole thing correcting every other word? How much time will you then waste that could have been spent more productively on your core business?

Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_154766_15.html

About Author : Anne Hickley has many years experience in a wide variety of administrative posts. Roles have included provision of secretarial services, PA work (including PA to the Provost at King's College, Cambridge), project management and administration, academic and business report writing and editing, and recruitment. She has worked for a range of companies and institutions from SMEs to multinational businesses. Anne has a scientific degree and doctorate, and also holds the Diploma in Recruitment Practice, the membership qualification for the Recruitment and Employment Confederation. She runs her own small business, Penguin Office Services, http://www.penguinofficeservices.co.uk and has a website specifically dedicated to transcription, Penguin Transcription, http://www.penguinofficeservices.co.uk/

Good News for Medical Transcriptionists

With the rise in both the popularity of voice recognition (VR) software as well as outsourcing of transcription work overseas, the professional forecast can seem a bit gloomy for the average work-from-home medical transcriptionist these days. As a veteran MT with eighteen years experience, I can tell you that I have, indeed, lost accounts to VR. I can only wonder if any of the clients I couldn't hold onto were lured by outsourcing. However, I would hardly conclude that the MT's days are numbered. In fact, I believe that with a little fine-tuning of one's personal and professional goals, today's transcriptionist can be just as busy and successful as ever.

Change Your Mindset

Anyone who works in an industry that is undergoing rapid change is likely to feel anxious. Many times this worry comes from having a scarcity mentality, thinking that there simply isn't enough work to go around. Common bothersome thoughts may include: the fear that one's job may become obsolete; concern that someone younger and less experienced may take one's job away; and not daring to raise one's fees when other options for clients might exist that appear more affordable to them.

These thoughts may lead an experienced transcriptionist to take on a client at a much lower rate than is reasonable given her level of skill. And all this stems from doubts about her value in the current marketplace. Well, I'm here to tell you that medical transcriptionists are still very much needed. The US Department of Labor estimated that 105,000 MTs were working in 2004. To some, that might appear to be a lot. But if you think about how many Americans have medical records,105,000 seems like a measly number of workers to be typing all those reports! I believe we don't have enough medical transcriptionists. So I suggest that MTs make a major switch in mindset from scarcity to plenty.

Persistence Pays Off

Because most transcription seems to be accessed through the platform of downloading audio files swiftly via the computer, it almost seems laughable that a doctor might still dictate into a tape recorder and that the MT would use a desktop transcriber as well as (gasp!)cassette tapes in order to carry out the work. Believe me, this scenario still plays out. And it is one of the more profitable accounts an MT can get, in fact. A physician who just "doesn't trust" what to him or her might be the new technology of voice recognition may very well feel more comfortable dictating reports the way he or she has always done.

I believe these are the best accounts to acquire and I happen to know that physicians do exist who dictate onto cassette tapes! Recently, the Medical Records department of a local hospital offered an excellent rate for transcription of their tapes, which were done as a back-up to the more sophisticated equipment they were using. Yes, jobs like this might include pick-up-and-delivery of the reports, but that is something that an MT can factor into the price as it is a service that few will offer.

My advice? Query the Medical Records department of regional hospitals as well as individual physicians and see if they are interested in your services. This is where it is essential to have a superbly-written sales letter as well as excellent people skills when you meet the department director or physician. Persistence will pay off when you dedicate yourself to landing these types of accounts.

A Goldmine of Transcription

Sometimes MTs seem to forget all about general transcription. GT, as it's called, definitely has its advantages. Every industry has its own lingo and terminology. However, in my opinion, nothing is as difficult to learn as medicalese. And while just about every medical report seems to be a stat report, folks who transcribe more general reports routinely ask for higher rates when the required turnaround deems that a job is a "rush." The relaxed turnaround seems to give the transcriptionist more room to breathe, and personally, I find this type of work to be less stressful.

I am saving the best news for last: with the popularity of teleseminars, Webinars and podcasts, it seems like just about everyone has some audio that needs to be transcribed. In the last six months I've had more requests to type general than medical audio. These clients just find me. But do you want to know where to get clients who are in a field that uses a lot of transcription? Coaching! That's right. Personal and business coaches do their fair share of teleseminars and each of these needs a transcript. And with coaching deemed one of the hottest professions of the next ten years, that's indeed good news for transcriptionists.

Article Source: http://www.1articleworld.com

Diane Fusco is a veteran MT with 18 years of experience working from home. She has a free-spirited approach to a changing medical transcription industry. Visit her blog at ThrivingandTranscribing

What Is Involved in Being a Medical Transcriptionist?

When I talk about having been a work at home medical transcriptionist, one of the most common questions I get is "how do I get into something like that?" This is often followed by "What does a medical transcriptionist do?"

In many ways the second question gives the more important information. You don't really need to know how to get into medical transcription if the job is not something you want to do, after all. And this job is not something everyone will be comfortable doing.

A medical transcriptionist types up dictation for a doctor. That's the short version. The reality is much more.

There are various types of dictation. A transcriptionist may type up clinic notes, letters, hospital reports, emergency room reports, physical exams, discharge reports and more. The accuracy required of a transcriptionist is exceptional, as all of these will be a part of the patient's permanent medical record. Mistakes can have serious impacts.

A medical transcriptionist has to listen to the doctor's dictation. This may not be as easy as some would expect. Many doctors have very poor dictation skills; some would say worse than their handwriting. It can be as though the doctor doesn't realize anyone has to type up what he's saying, and just wants to get it done and over with as soon as possible.

Despite that, you have to do your very best to get it exactly right without guesswork. No matter how incomprehensible the doctor is making his report, guessing is the wrong thing to do. There are rules for what you do when you cannot understand the doctor.

Fortunately, other doctors are a joy to transcribe for. It doesn't matter if they speak quickly or slowly; they speak so clearly that you have no trouble understanding them.

Being a work at home medical transcriptionist also means finding work hours that suit you. You will need quiet. It doesn't matter what else is going on in your life or in your home around you. When you commit to work you need to get it done, and there are turnaround times to be met.

The Internet has greatly simplified how a medical transcriptionist gets work onto his or her computer in many cases. While if you are on your own you may still pick up tapes from the doctor's office, most services simply have you use your Internet connection to get your work and send it back when complete. This also minimizes your equipment needs.

One of the most important aspects is the absolute requirement that you respect patient privacy. You will want to understand what HIPPA requires of a medical transcriptionist.

The job requirements for a medical transcriptionist can be quite strict in many ways, but when you work at home you can also enjoy tremendous flexibility. You can set your schedule and the conditions under which you are working. You choose how your office is set up. You choose your equipment.

About Author: Stephanie Foster runs http://www.medicaltranscriptionbasics.com/ as a resource for those interested in getting into medical transcription. For more information on medical transcription training, visit her site.

Source : http://www.goarticles.com/