How to effectively use Bridge-IT voice recognition

How to effectively use Bridge-IT voice recognition

The ability to use voice recognition to create clinical notes and letter templates can be a real time saver. However, to get the most from this functionality it is essential to perform a few steps to make voice recognition more effective. These steps are outlined below:

Step 1

Train Windows to better recognise your voice. To do this you need to go to the "Control Panel" in Windows. If you know how to open this please do so, otherwise follow these steps:-

1. Select "Settings" in Windows by clicking on the Windows Start button in the bottom left of your screen and choosing the "Settings" icon.

2. Type "Control Panel" in the search box and select it using your mouse.

3. Select the option "Train your computer to understand you better".

4. Now use the speech tutor which will guide you through a set of sentences designed to help Windows understand your voice more effectively. This may take 5-10 minutes.

Step 2

Now you need to turn on voice recognition within the Bridge-IT software. Make sure your microphone is plugged in and go to "My Settings" at the top of the screen, and then "Enable Speech Recognition".

Step 3

To increase the ability of Windows to better understand common phrases you use, Bridge-IT can scan all of your clinical notes and pick out the most used phrases from your clinical notes. To perform this scan, select "Tools --> Non-Administrator Functions --> Customise Speech Recognition" from the menu.

Step 4

On the right you will see how often a phrase should be detected before it is considered one that you and your staff often use. Set this to whatever frequency you think would be appropriate and press the "Scan Clinical Notes" button. Wait until the progress bar has finished at the end of which you will see the most common phrases listed. These phrases will now be given priority whenever Windows is trying to understand voice patterns. Press the "Save and Close" button.

Step 5

Now try creating a clinical note using voice recognition.

Local Edition (where the software is installed on your own practice network)

Note when you view the clinical note editor, an icon will be displayed indicating the program is not currently voice recording. To start voice recording, simply say the words, "Start Recording". The icon will change to show it is now recording anything you say and you will see that reflected in the clinical note text. To stop recording at any time simply say, "Stop Recording".

Cloud Edition

The cloud edition uses the Bridge-IT Connect software to process your voice on your local computer. You must therefore be using a minimum of version 1.4.0 of the Connect software.

When you view the clinical note editor, you can activate the voice recognition function by saying the words, "Start Recording". After a few seconds Bridge-IT Connect will display a dialogue for gathering the text you want to upload. Speak the words you want to use in your clinical note and once you are finished press the 'OK' button. This will upload the text back to the cloud and your clinical note will be populated with the text after a couple of seconds.

Obviously voice recognition works best when:

1. You speak slowly and enunciate each word correctly.

2. There is little ambient noise in the background.

3. Have a decent quality microphone.