Three Body Problem - Transcription Productivity and Speech Understanding

As an official Space Aficionado who "Applied to Ride" in an attempt to get a spot on a Russian rocket into space in the 80's and was beaten to that spot by the scientist from "Mars" - the confectionery maker I can't resist finding a link between current Apollo 11 memories and healthcare and clinical documentation........

The moon shot was a triumph in so many areas - the science alone was complex, challenging and with the level of computer sophistication at the time even more incredible for its success. Bear in mind that the Lunar Lander had a computer that had the same power as a wristwatch today (actually it was probably less). It is clear from this insightful Op-ed piece in the NY Times - "One Giant Leap to Nowhere" that much of the drive and success of the moon shot was less about the technology and more about the vision of one individual. Wernher von Braun was the philosopher who created the vision and orchestrated the various components into place to successfully place a man on the moon and return him safely to earth. The original drive was more military than scientific despite the fact that any possible attack from space remains challenging by virtue of the "three body problem".

Clinical documentation needs to solve an equally complex three body problem of Medical Editors, productivity and Speech Understanding. There are clear benefits to be had from implementing technology but these benefits accrue not just from the technology but from addressing all the elements. Imposing requirements on physicians on the way they dictate (pronunciation, terms, punctuation etc), on what they use to dictate (audio quality is a big contributor to ability of a speech understanding technology) and even simple workflow improvements that remove the necessity to dictate patient information or repeat information that is already captured and can included automatically are all key elements that can contribute to successfully using technology to improve efficiency. That said I would advocate some variations including less demand on changing physician behavior and having the technology adapt to the physician rather than the other way around - but not all technology is capable of this smarter approach.

In fact Jay Vance in his Blog The XY Files in an MT World talked about these points in a recent posting "Transitioning to Speech Recognition Editing". As he points out there is more than just technology at play. As he rightly points out:

This leaves the impression that 100% of the permanent physicians' dictations are being successfully recognized by the system....I've never seen this level of successful implementation, ever

And the point is well taken there is more at work here than just technology. The medical editor remains a key resource in this equation and part of the three body problem. But just applying technology won't make medical editors more efficient and more productive and importantly better compensated. Addressing the productivity gains and educating not just the clinicians but the editors and management is essential.

I'd add an additional element to this equation one I believe is essential to clinical documentation companies and specialists in this field.... this is not just documentation this is clinical knowledge and information. Generating "reports" or blobs of text be they in RTF, PDF, DOC, or TXT format is not solving the problem or addressing the needs of the sector. Clinical documentation specialists should be using their human intelligence and knowledge to generate "Meaningful Clinical Documents". We require vision and drive towards the creation of clinically actionable data from the documentation industry. We have the necessary infrastructure to help achieve that - I've talked extensively about Healthstory and the importance of preserving the narrative while making the information contained semantically interoperable or computer interpretable for consumption in our increasingly digitized world of medicine. The industry needs to rally around generating useful information not plain old text.

In many respects I think the industry needs the philosopher visionary who can, like Wernher von Braun, articulate the reason why transcription remains an essential component of healthcare delivery and not a dieing industry. His response to the frequently raised question of space exploration and why we Robots were not the solution to space exploration:

there is no computerized explorer in the world with more than a tiny fraction of the power of a chemical analog computer known as the human brain

Has much in common with healthcare, medicine and in particular the process of documenting and capturing clinical information where I would say:

There is no computerized system in the world with more than a tiny fraction of the power of a chemical analog computer known as the human brain, that can replace the knowledge workers in healthcare

Are you that resource and can you be part of that vision or even lead that vision. This is a rallying cry for Clinical Documentation to shoot for Mars and generate Meaningful Clinical Documents that contain the complete Healthstory.