The Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar es Salaam has become the first public hospital in Tanzania to use voice recognition technology.

According to IT News Africa, the hospital’s radiology department is using a computer software programme with the ability to decode human voices. Doctors can now dictate into their computer micorphones and have the speech engine recognise what they want, and then apply the commands or structured words to obtain a radiology report for a patient.

This innovation is expected to result in the more efficient documentation of patient information and decrease report turnaround time. ‘We used to have the situation where patients had to wait [for a long time] to obtain results. This technology will also ease the burden on our staff because they had to move back and forth in trying to process such imaging tests,’ says Lawrence Museru, the hospital’s executive director.

The voice recognition system will aid in reducing or eliminating transcription services as well as backlogs, which will ultimately lead to improved patient care.

6 March 2018
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