The Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa has successfully transferred all radiologists to the new Philips SpeechMike Premium
HUS – the Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa – is a Joint Authority formed by 24 municipalities to provide equal access to specialized medical care to all patients in these areas.
SpeechMike Premium for all radiologists
Dr. Tomi Kauppinen is Development Director at the HUS Medical Imaging Center and was responsible for the SpeechMike Premium implementation. “The transfer to the new SpeechMike Premium was really easy and it was a good decision to swap all devices at the same time. When IT infrastructures are harmonized, there are fewer failures in the system and additionally it is a big advantage for the helpdesk to know that every user has the same model. This makes support so much easier”, tells Tomi Kauppinen. Within all HUS hospitals there are around 200 radiologists using digital dictation devices. 90% of their dictations are created using speech recognition software.
Philips dictation devices in use since 2004
“We have been using Philips dictation devices since many years already. Our radiologists started to use speech recognition from 2004 onwards. Now we use the SpeechMike Premium, which delivers great speech recognition results. The big advantage of using dictation for report creation is that the whole process of reporting can be streamlined and a lot of time can be saved, especially in comparison to typing reports manually”, explains Dr. Kauppinen.
Dr. Mika Koivikko, Radiologist-in-chief at the Töölö hospital in Helsinki, is using digital dictation with speech recognition since it was implemented in HUS. He and his colleagues belong to the first radiologists to use speech recognition for clinical work within HUS.
“I am using digital dictation with speech recognition software every day for my radiology reports and I am very happy about the speech recognition results and performance of the SpeechMike Premium. Using speech recognition even works in noisy environments, because the device filters out the background noise”, tells Dr. Koivikko.
Best grades for the new SpeechMike
“Of course compared to the older models the audio quality is a lot better and I really like the ergonomics of the new device. But what is most important to me, is that the handling of the device did not really change that much”, Dr. Koivikko pointed out. “If you compare it to a car – it is great to have new features, but it is essential that the gas pedal, brakes, steering wheel, and so on, are all exactly where you are used to having them”, Dr. Koivikko added convincingly.
Dr. Koivikko’s department currently employs fifteen radiologists and four residents. Almost all of them are actively using speech recognition at work.
“I would recommend the SpeechMike Premium to other colleagues and I would also advice all radiologists to use digital dictation with speech recognition for generating their reports. It is much more efficient than typing and reports are delivered faster to the patients. And that is what counts”, explains Dr. Koivikko.
Reliable local support
Oy Konttorityö is the local distributor for Philips dictation devices in Finland.
“Our local distributor in Finland is Oy Konttorityö. The support from Oy Konttorityö and Philips is great, but at the same time the device works so well, that we hardly need any support”, tells Dr. Kauppinen.
“We are delighted to have such a long standing business relationship with HUS. To see how well the SpeechMike Premium is working within their environment makes us very proud”, says Perttu Hynninen, CEO of Oy Konttorityö.