State-of-the-art speech recognition solution advances radiology reporting. 

Agfa HealthCare, a leading provider of diagnostic imaging and healthcare IT solutions, announces the release of TalkStation™ 4.0, its integrated speech recognition workflow solution for radiology reporting today. The new software platform includes features that improve physician efficiency, enhance speech recognition, and provide tighter integration with the company’s IMPAX® radiology Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS).

TalkStation 4.0 is designed to streamline radiology interpretation tasks and minimize the time and effort required to complete daily reporting activities. "The solution has a number of new features that improve the way physicians interact with the application," said Dr. Kevin Junck, associate professor of radiology and chief of radiology informatics at theUniversityofAlabamaat Birmingham (UAB) Health System. "It has become embedded in clinician workflow and even radiologists that were advocates of traditional transcription want to use it for everything."

New features include:
• Enhanced workflow for resident training, including customized activity worklists, attending physician rejection of reports, and 'read-out' workflow for joint report approval by resident and attending physician
• Web-based sign-off of reports supports resident- or transcription-based workflows
• "My Activities" toolbar makes it easy for radiologists to find preliminary and corrected reports and, in an academic environment, resident reports that need approval
• Automatic color coding of report text based on input device draws the radiologist's eyes to areas of the report that are at greater risk for inaccuracy
• User interface with virtually unlimited flexibility enables physicians to move, add or remove toolbars and toolbar buttons and choose from different skins to meet the lighting needs of multiple viewing room situations

In addition, TalkStation 4.0 enables more efficient report creation due to a reduction in both voice recognition errors and report editing time. "The most important thing in radiology reporting is accuracy," said Dr. Junck. "Our move to the latest version of Agfa HealthCare's TalkStation has provided a tremendous increase in speech recognition accuracy."

"TalkStation 4.0 has increased its recognition of my voice far beyond previous versions," added Dr. Robert Stanley, chairman emeritus of UAB's radiology department. "I roll along without a pause and when I check my report to sign off on it, I rarely need to make corrections."

TalkStation 4.0 seamlessly interfaces with IMPAX, allowing it to function as an integrated extension of the PACS, instead of operating as an independent application. For example, TalkStation is configured to automatically populate exam accession numbers from the PACS, eliminating a step that previously required physicians to initiate synchronization.

"Agfa HealthCare is committed to maximizing physician efficiency by helping radiology departments improve reporting quality," saidLenny Reznik,Director, Enterprise Imaging and Information, Agfa HealthCare. "With TalkStation 4.0, Agfa HealthCare advances radiology reporting with state-of-the-art technology, toolsets, and workflows."

Courtesy of Agfa