A novel voice signature method for electronic death registration systems. (9/76)

Electronic signature of documents is frequently a challenging problem in the medical domain. This is particularly an issue with death certificates which require timely signatures. In the process of developing an electronic death registration system, we devised a novel remote signature method involving an off-the-shelf interactive voice response system (IVRS). This paper describes this system and its motivations.  (+info)

Widening the temporal window: processing support in the treatment of aphasic language production. (10/76)

Investigations of language processing in aphasia have increasingly implicated performance factors such as slowed activation and/or rapid decay of linguistic information. This approach is supported by studies utilizing a communication system (SentenceShaper) which functions as a "processing prosthesis." The system may reduce the impact of processing limitations by allowing repeated refreshing of working memory and by increasing the opportunity for aphasic subjects to monitor their own speech. Some aphasic subjects are able to produce markedly more structured speech on the system than they are able to produce spontaneously, and periods of largely independent home use of SentenceShaper have been linked to treatment effects, that is, to gains in speech produced without the use of the system. The purpose of the current study was to follow up on these studies with a new group of subjects. A second goal was to determine whether repeated, unassisted elicitations of the same narratives at baseline would give rise to practice effects, which could undermine claims for the efficacy of the system.  (+info)

Usability of a barcode scanning system as a means of data entry on a PDA for self-report health outcome questionnaires: a pilot study in individuals over 60 years of age. (11/76)

BACKGROUND: Throughout the medical and paramedical professions, self-report health status questionnaires are used to gather patient-reported outcome measures. The objective of this pilot study was to evaluate in individuals over 60 years of age the usability of a PDA-based barcode scanning system with a text-to-speech synthesizer to collect data electronically from self-report health outcome questionnaires. METHODS: Usability of the system was tested on a sample of 24 community-living older adults (7 men, 17 women) ranging in age from 63 to 93 years. After receiving a brief demonstration on the use of the barcode scanner, participants were randomly assigned to complete two sets of 16 questions using the bar code wand scanner for one set and a pen for the other. Usability was assessed using directed interviews with a usability questionnaire and performance-based metrics (task times, errors, sources of errors). RESULTS: Overall, participants found barcode scanning easy to learn, easy to use, and pleasant. Participants were marginally faster in completing the 16 survey questions when using pen entry (20/24 participants). The mean response time with the barcode scanner was 31 seconds longer than traditional pen entry for a subset of 16 questions (p = 0.001). The responsiveness of the scanning system, expressed as first scan success rate, was less than perfect, with approximately one-third of first scans requiring a rescan to successfully capture the data entry. The responsiveness of the system can be explained by a combination of factors such as the location of the scanning errors, the type of barcode used as an answer field in the paper version, and the optical characteristics of the barcode scanner. CONCLUSION: The results presented in this study offer insights regarding the feasibility, usability and effectiveness of using a barcode scanner with older adults as an electronic data entry method on a PDA. While participants in this study found their experience with the barcode scanning system enjoyable and learned to become proficient in its use, the responsiveness of the system constitutes a barrier to wide-scale use of such a system. Optimizing the graphical presentation of the information on paper should significantly increase the system's responsiveness.  (+info)

Application of speech recognition data entry enhancements in an Electronic Patient Care Report (ePCR). (12/76)

Based on the Alabama Patient Care Report we developed a basic Electronic Patient Care Report (ePCR) to collect data in an EMS environment. The ePCR GUI is now enhanced using speech recognition to provide speech-based command and control mechanisms to input structured data and initiate processes. This voice-enabled ePCR (vePCR) is used to evaluate the feasibility of handling EMS test cases and to get user feedback about the speech recognition functionality and usefulness.  (+info)

Improving the utility of speech recognition through error detection. (13/76)

Despite the potential to dominate radiology reporting, current speech recognition technology is thus far a weak and inconsistent alternative to traditional human transcription. This is attributable to poor accuracy rates, in spite of vendor claims, and the wasted resources that go into correcting erroneous reports. A solution to this problem is post-speech-recognition error detection that will assist the radiologist in proofreading more efficiently. In this paper, we present a statistical method for error detection that can be applied after transcription. The results are encouraging, showing an error detection rate as high as 96% in some cases.  (+info)

Voice recognition dictation: radiologist as transcriptionist. (14/76)

Continuous voice recognition dictation systems for radiology reporting provide a viable alternative to conventional transcription services with the promise of shorter report turnaround times and increased cost savings. While these benefits may be realized in academic institutions, it is unclear how voice recognition dictation impacts the private practice radiologist who is now faced with the additional task of transcription. In this article, we compare conventional transcription services with a commercially available voice recognition system with the following results: 1) Reports dictated with voice recognition took 50% longer to dictate despite being 24% shorter than those conventionally transcribed, 2) There were 5.1 errors per case, and 90% of all voice recognition dictations contained errors prior to report signoff while 10% of transcribed reports contained errors. 3). After signoff, 35% of VR reports still had errors. Additionally, cost savings using voice recognition systems in non-academic settings may not be realized. Based on average radiologist and transcription salaries, the additional time spent dictating with voice recognition costs an additional $6.10 per case or $76,250.00 yearly. The opportunity costs may be higher. Informally surveyed, all radiologists expressed dissatisfaction with voice recognition with feelings of frustration, and increased fatigue. In summary, in non-academic settings, utilizing radiologists as transcriptionists results in more error ridden radiology reports and increased costs compared with conventional transcription services.  (+info)

Factors influencing glimpsing of speech in noise. (15/76)

The idea that listeners are able to "glimpse" the target speech in the presence of competing noise has been supported by many studies, and is based on the assumption that listeners are able to glimpse pieces of the target speech occurring at different times and somehow patch them together to hear out the target speech. The factors influencing glimpsing in noise are not well understood and are examined in the present study. Specifically, the effects of the frequency location, spectral width, and duration of the glimpses are examined. Stimuli were constructed using an ideal time-frequency (T-F) masking technique that ensures that the target is stronger than the masker in certain T-F regions of the mixture, thereby rendering certain regions easier to glimpse than others. Sentences were synthesized using this technique with glimpse information placed in several frequency regions while varying the glimpse window duration and total duration of glimpsing. Results indicated that the frequency location and total duration of the glimpses had a significant effect on speech recognition, with the highest performance obtained when the listeners were able to glimpse information in the F1F2 frequency region (0-3 kHz) for at least 60% of the utterance.  (+info)

Computerized measurement of negative symptoms in schizophrenia. (16/76)

Accurate measurement of negative symptoms is crucial for understanding and treating schizophrenia. However, current measurement strategies are reliant on subjective symptom rating scales, which often have psychometric and practical limitations. Computerized analysis of patients' speech offers a sophisticated and objective means of evaluating negative symptoms. The present study examined the feasibility and validity of using widely-available acoustic and lexical-analytic software to measure flat affect, alogia and anhedonia (via positive emotion). These measures were examined in their relationships to clinically-rated negative symptoms and social functioning. Natural speech samples were collected and analyzed for 14 patients with clinically-rated flat affect, 46 patients without flat affect and 19 healthy controls. The computer-based inflection and speech rate measures significantly discriminated patients with flat affect from controls, and the computer-based measure of alogia and negative emotion significantly discriminated the flat and nonflat patients. Both the computer and clinical measures of positive emotion/anhedonia corresponded to functioning impairments. The computerized method of assessing negative symptoms offered a number of advantages over the symptom scale-based approach.  (+info)