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Table of Contents

Dictating with OnePacs

Voice recognition

Computer-based voice recognition for radiology reporting has become extremely accurate and due to the substantial cost savings compared with transcription services, is the preferred method of report dictation for many radiologists.

Recommended packages

The following voice recognition packages are recommended for use with OnePacs.

OnePacs Voice Recognition
OnePacs offers its own voice recognition solution, which is tightly integrated into the OnePacs reporting system. Documentation can be found here.

Dragon Medical Practice Edition

The recommended third party voice recognition solution for use with OnePacs is the Dragon medical professional/medical practice software package from Nuance. This software package installs individually onto each PC (Windows 7, 8, and 10 supported) on which dictation will be performed. There is an approximately $1,600 one-time cost per user for unlimited use of the voice recognition system. Options exist for central deployment of user profiles.

To use Dragon Medical Professional with OnePacs, simply use the Dragon voice recognition system to generate text which should be entered by the system directly into the report body edit section of the OnePacs report entry window.

nVoq "Say it"

Some groups using OnePacs groups utilize the nVoq "Say it" medical speech recognition solution.

Setting plain text editing mode

When using OnePacs Voice Recognition, or a third party voice recognition software package, it is recommended that users enter reports in plain-text mode, to facilitate voice recognition-based formatting or editing and navigation features.

To do so, first access reporting preferences either from the general “User Preferences” item in the “Options” menu on the main OnePacs worklist page, or by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right hand corner of the OnePacs report window.

The option to be selected appears as follows:

To confirm that you are reporting in plain text mode, check for the presence of a rich text editing toolbar at the top of the report edit field (it will be absent in plain text mode):

If you are editing in rich text mode, a text formatting toolbar will be present:


  

Using Dragon while reviewing cases

Hidden mode

If the computer on which dictation is being performed is also the PC which is being used for case review, one may use the hidden mode feature of Dragon Medical Practice Edition to enable simultaneous dictation while reviewing cases. To use this feature, say the words “hidden mode on” when you wish to enter hidden mode. Your dictation from that point onwards will be recognized by Dragon, but rather than “typed” immediately, it will be stored for later use. After you have finished case review, place the cursor in the location where you wish the recognized text to be pasted, and say the words “transfer text”. The results of your dictation during the time hidden mode was on will be pasted at the cursor location.

A video demonstrating use of this feature is available here.

dns.comfort software package with "SpeechLock"

If a radiologist wishes to simultaneously dictate, using Dragon voice navigation and editing commands, Dragon Medical Practice Edition may be used along with a third-party software product called "dns.comfort", sold by Sonic Labs (http://www.sonic-labs.net/en/). This software product offers a feature called "SpeechLock", which can be used to direct all dictation activity into a specified window, even while other windows/applications are being used. To use this feature to facilitate dictation into OnePacs, for example, a user may enable the "Auto-Lock" setting on the Dragon dictation box. This means that, whenever the Dragon dictation box is open, all speech/dictation activity will be routed to it, even while the users is reviewing/manipulating cases in OnePacs workstation. Users may, for example, establish standard Dragon macros using bracketed variables and so on, and navigate through the dictation using voice commands. When the dictation is finished, the user may activate the text field of the OnePacs report edit window and say "Transfer text" to move the dictation from the Dictation box to the OnePacs report edit window.
dns.comfort including SpeechLock may be purchased directly from Sonic Labs through the following URL:  www.shareit.com/product.html?productid=300647634
a) Turning on Speechlock from the system tray icon of dns.comfort:

...


Voice Recording and Manual Transcription (deprecated)

The Dictation feature of OnePacs allows users with browsers that support Java applets to dictate directly into a OnePacs reporting window. When this is done, the voice recording files (.wav files) will be directly attached to the cases for which dictations were performed.

Note
titleDeprecated Feature

The manual dictation/transcription feature has been deprecated because this feature depends upon an in-browser Java applet, and all major browsers either have already, or have announced that they soon will, end support for in-browser Java applets. Accordingly, this feature is deprecated and the availability of this feature is not guaranteed going forward.

Alternatives to this feature include either using the proofreading workflow in conjunction with voice recognition software, or recording audio files with a third-party application and attaching the audio files to cases through the OnePacs file attachments feature.

 


Dictating into OnePacs

Users for whom the “Dictate” privilege has been assigned in OnePacs will have a “Dictate report…” option available in the menu displayed upon right-clicking on the case being reported:

This will bring up a new window, running a voice recording Java applet, set to record audio in from the currently selected default audio input device. This is compatible with Windows and Mac OS X. (This likely also works properly in a Linux environment.)

The on-screen controls for starting and stopping recording, playback, and pausing recording or playback are self-explanatory. The Java applet also attempts to recognize any installed speech-input devices and may recognize the on-device controls for these functions as well.

When dictation is completed, stop dictation and click the “Upload Dictation” button. The voice recording, as a .wav file, will be uploaded to OnePacs and the file will be attached to the case. The case will acquire the worklist status of “Dictated”, with the following status icon: .  The case will be automatically be reassigned back to the radiologist that performed that last dictation.

Listening to OnePacs Dictations

The following system permissions will enable those users who also have “view” access to the facility which performed the study to access study dictations: “Access or upload study files”, “Dictate” or “Transcribe”.

When a dictation has been performed for a case, users with permission to listen to dictations for the case will see a “listen to dictation” icon  among the toolbar icons for the case in question:

Upon clicking on the “listen to dictation” icon, the dictation file will download to the logged in user's local PC, from which point it can be played in the default program configured for playback of audio files.

Alternatively, the voice dictation file may also be retrieved from the study files folder for the case in question.

Transcribing Reports

Users with the “transcribe reports” permission one OnePacs may enter transcribed report texts for cases, and save these reports as report drafts on OnePacs. Upon so doing, the case acquires a worklist status of “Transcribed”, with the following worklist status icon:

The reading radiologist can then open the report draft, review the transcription, edit as necessary, and finalize the report.

Choice of microphone

Any standard voice-recognition grade microphone will work with either of the above described dictation methods in OnePacs.

For users using the Dragon Medical Professional package, Nuance offers a microphone with user-programmable buttons, which can control dictation functions from the handset. This device is called the PowerMic and is described here:

http://shop.nuance.com/store/nuanceus/en_US/pd/productID.139321300
http://speechrecsolutions.com/microphones_dictaphone.html


A variety of other microphones are available from a number of on-line vendors, including:

http://speechrecsolutions.com/
http://www.speechtechnology.com/microphones/
http://www.emicrophones.com/

One vendor offers an online guide to microphone selection:
http://speechrecsolutions.com/microphone_selection_guide.htm

A popular option for users who prefer hands-free dictation is the Buddy Flamingo stand-alone microphone:
http://speechrecsolutions.com/microphones_buddy.html