Mobile Phone With Integrated ECG Functionality Offers Remote Patient Lifeline

A new mobile phone that provides a quick and simple way to measure, record and send vital electrocardiograms (ECGs) could help millions of people who suffer from heart-related medical conditions, claims its German inventors. The H'andy sana is a new full-featured, touch screen mobile phone that also includes an application called Heart Suite. This allows a person to take their ECG instantly from any place and at any time; and send it to a doctor or qualified medical professional for advice along with other data such as blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol.

The new mobile device will be launched in the United Kingdom later this year by Medical Marketing UK Ltd, which has signed a deal with MMB GmbH for exclusive marketing rights for the H'andy sana along with other innovative products in the MMB portfolio.

A number of leading telecommunications companies have already expressed interest in taking the H'andy sana to market.

Source: dicardiology.net

Cardiology Transcriptionist- Integrating Transcription With EMR and Speech Recognition Software

The cardiology transcriptionist converts voice file, which contains patient health information, into an electronic file. The file is encrypted and sent back safely to the physician, who then decrypts it back to the original form. The stored information can be accessed, whenever needed during the course of treatment. Transcription process takes time and the turnaround time generally varies from 4 hours to 48 hours depending upon type of medical reports and service of transcription provider.

The emergence of new applications like speech recognition software and Electronic medical record (EMR) has increased the speed and ease with which, the patient health data can be processed and stored in the computer.

Electronic Medical Record

In EMR, during the patient-doctor encounter, the clinical observations of the patient are fed into the computer by selecting the related terms from the pre-structured point-and-click template. The physician enters the appropriate clinical term from the available choices to make complete electronic record of the patient. This record can be accessed or updated by other physician during the course of treatment and thus provides great flexibility in treating the patient. EMR has inbuilt safety system, which provides medication warnings or drug allergy alerts.

One main loophole is that there is no crosschecking mechanism present in EMR, which ensures that no wrong information is entered and carried forward into treatment .This can seriously jeopardize the safety of the patient. Since the information is stored on basis of pre-structured template the output from the template is too canned and loses the individuality.

Speech Recognition Software

Speech recognition software is an excellent tool, which directly converts the spoken words into text on computer screen. Thus a physician can directly speak into the computer and see for him or herself the text on the screen. This saves times as the there is no need to send the file to the transcriptionists and this reduces the turnaround time considerably.

Shortcomings in Speech recognition Software

In spite of latest advancements is this field, the software is not completely accurate. There are errors in it and it requires human intervention to guarantee the accuracy of the final outcome. Further the software requires human training to condition it to the voice pattern and dictation style of the end user.

Cardiology Transcriptionist Bridging the Gap

The above shortcomings can be easily overcome by integrating the transcription process with EMR and speech recognition software. The Cardiology transcriptionist can work in tandem with back-end speech recognition software to edit the errors in report transcribed by the software. The voice file is sent along with electronic file to transcriptionist, who then edits it. The transcribing speed increases considerably, without compromising the accuracy of the report.

The Cardiology transcriptionist also overcomes the shortcomings of EMR. The presence of well trained transcriptionist and team of quality control department guarantees high degree of accuracy of the medical report. A pair of fresh and trained human eyes, ensure that no wrong information is fed in the electronic medical records of the patient. The transcription provides other advantage in form vivid and detailed description of the patient health which is missing in the EMR. This detailed account is necessary where the physician needs in depth knowledge about the past and present medical observations of the patient to arrive at conclusion, especially in critical and difficult cases.

Thus a Cardiology transcriptionist plays a crucial role in integration of transcription process with EMR and speech recognition software to by overriding their shortcomings. It provides the human intelligence, vigilance and instinct to successfully integrate transcription with speech recognition software and EMR.

EMR, speech recognition software and Cardiology transcription can be integrated to increase quality of Cardiac care.

Jason Gaya

Read more on Cardiology transcription at, www.cardioscribes.com

Cardiology Transcription: Overcoming Errors to Increase the Accuracy of Transcribed Report

The cardiac reports of the patients are dictated into the voice recorder by the Cardiologist and sent to the cardiology transcriptionists through internet. The transcriptionists listen to it and type it into computer, to create electronic text files. A poorly recorded dictation, heavy accented voice, background disturbances, loss of concentration, improper knowledge of medical terminology and typing errors are some of the major reasons behind errors in transcribed reports.

A transcribed report having accuracy of more than 98% is accepted as reliable medical document and is used by the physician to treat the patient. The errors are categorized as follows:

• Critical Errors – These are mistakes in Patient ID, omission in dictation or a missing part and misuse of medical word so that it severely compromises the safety of the patient information. A transcription report, which has one or more, such type of errors, is rejected.
• Major errors- The errors like wrong verb usage, spelling mistakes, failure to raise flag for quality audit or misusing the flagging right. A transcribed report having three or more such types of errors is rejected.
• Minor errors- The grammar or format mistakes or any other errors, which have very less impact on the safety or the integrity of the medical report, fall under this category. A transcription report, which has nine or more such type of errors, is rejected.

A higher frequency of errors in the Cardiology transcription report points towards poor quality standards of the transcription company and casts a bad impression about the professional competence of the service provider. The time, money and manpower spent towards correcting these errors increase the production cost. The turnaround time also increases and prevents in timely delivery of treatment to the patients.

Streamlining the Transcription process

A detailed analysis of the Cardiology transcription process will help to identify bottlenecks, which induce errors in the final outcome. Mentioned below is the some important quality enhancing steps, which increase the accuracy of the transcription report, considerably.

• Provide intensive training to cardiology transcriptionists.
• Assign a small group of cardiology transcribers to a particular dictator so that voice pattern and dictation style can be familiarized.
• Integrate Speech recognition software with transcriptionists. The software will speed up process, while the transcribers will edit errors in the report. This will reduce fatigue on cardiologist trancriptionists and thus minimize errors.
• The MT should update their knowledge of medical terminology, regularly.
• The quality control department should work in tandem with transcribers and provide a complete feedback about the quality of transcribed reports. The audit department should help cardiology transcriptionists to identify their weakness and provide them sufficient training to increase the accuracy of the report. This will surely raise the quality standards of the final output.
• Sharpen listening skills of the transcribers and editing skills of proofreaders or editors through in house training to filter out the errors.

The accuracy of the cardiology transcription report is of paramount importance because the physician depends on it, to treat the patients. Any error, carried forward, can alter the outcome of the treatment and seriously undermine the health of the patient.

To eliminate the transcription error it is necessary to understand its source and streamline the process accordingly.

Jason Gaya

Read more on Cardiology Transcription at, www.cardioscribes.com

Cardiology Transcription - Achieving Super TAT

The Cardiology transcription industry is facing tough competition from EMR and speech recognition software. These new applications make it easy for the cardiologists or cardiac surgeons to quickly enter the requisite cardiac observation of the heart patient. This speeds up the diagnosis process and helps the cardiologist to treat patients in time.

Cardiology Transcription consists of dictation, conversion of the voice file into electronic file and finally its dispatch back to the cardiologist. As more people and processes are involved the turn around time increases. In EMR the point-and-click mechanism helps for easy input of patient information into the computer while speech recognition software directly prints the spoken words into text on computer screen. Thus the access time for health information is less in EMR compared to the Cardiology transcription process.

Hence it is necessary to shorten the turnaround time of the transcribed report so that it can be integrated easily with latest technology easily. To achieve super turn around time some steps need to be taken, which are presented below:

• Provide sound training to MT.

• Create small groups of cardiology transcriptionists, with each group assigned to a specific dictator. This helps the transcriptionists to understand clearly the voice pattern and the dictation style of the dictator. The result is significant reduction in transcribed errors.

• Offer incentives to transcriptionists for reducing TAT.

• Provide toll free number to dictators because they provide you business.

• Synchronize Cardiology transcriptionists with speech recognition software to reduce TAT. Software will speed up transcription process while the trained transcriptionists will edit the errors made by software. This will increase productivity and eliminate reworking on files due to overlooked errors.

• Assign the best Cardiology transcriptionists to your biggest business provider.

• Know very well the desired TAT for your individual customers. Identify which data needs to be transcribed and sent to customer, first. In short prioritize the transcription process.

• Ensure maximum availability of transcribing staff during peak loads and streamline the file allocation process. Associate clearly, individual file allocator with a group of transcriptionist.

• Plan well, Cardiology transcription process, so that maximum numbers of transcriptionists are available to smoothly handle the peak workloads and there are no backlogs.

• Ensure maximum feedback to transcribers. The quality control department should work in tandem with Cardiology transcriptionists and train them how to improve the quality standards of their output.

• Create smooth link between dictators, file allocators and transcribers so that there is no communication gap between them and thus ensures timely completion and delivery of the transcribed reports.

The main focus is to reduce the turnaround time so that Cardiologist can receive the patient health reports in time and thus enhance the quality of patient care.

A streamlined Cardiology transcription process helps Cardiologist to deliver faster treatment to patients.

Jason Gaya

Read more on Cardiology transcription at, www.cardioscribes.com

Reducing TAT For Smoother Integration of EMR With Cardiology Transcription

The Turn around time or TAT, as it popularly known is the total time taken towards dictation of cardiac records of patient into the voice recorder, it’s conversion into electronic file and dispatch back the physician. There is no prevalent standard, which clearly defines the ideal turnaround time for the health providers and their business associates.The turn around time varies from one transcription service provider to the other.

The latest developments in the EMR and speech recognition software technology have increased the speed and ease, with which the patient health information can converted into electronic format. The Cardiology transcription consists of series of different processes,which increase the time taken to document the information. In EMR, during patient-doctor encounter, the point-and-click template method converts health information of the patient directly into electronic format. This is a quick and easy way to store huge amount of data in a cost effective way as it saves the organization money, which would have been spent towards creating and managing the records storage area.

The development of front end speech recognition software has made it easier for the physicians to directly speak into the computer and convert the voice into electronic text. The text is then edited by the doctor himself and there is no need of an editor or transcriptionist. The software is not completely accurate and there and are errors in the transcribed report.This drawback is overcome in the back-end speech recognition software because the voice file is sent along with draft to transcriptionist, who then edits it and sends back to the physician.

The emergence and acceptance of EMR has made it necessary for the transcription service providers needs to reduce the turnaround time so that the physicians can easily avail the patient information at a short notice because time is of an essence in treatment. Thus electronic medical record and speech recognition software offer better medical documentation options compared to a slow transcribed report.

This drawback in cardiology transcription can be overcome by reducing turn around time so that transcription can be smoothly integrated with electronic medical record. At same time the expertise of the transcriptionist will ensure that high level of accuracy is maintained, which is missing from speech recognition software.

A short TAT helps to integrate EMR with Cardiology transcription.

Jason Gaya

Read more on Cardiology transcription at, www.cardioscribes.com

Cardiology Transcriptionist: Enhancing Cardiac Care

The Cardiologist after diagnosing the heart patient dictates all the clinical observations in a voice recorder. The recorded report is then transmitted over the internet as a voice file to the transcription service provider. The cardiology transcriptionist attentively listens to the voice files and types the information into the computer, to create an electronic file. The quality control department checks for any errors and an accurate file is then sent back to the cardiologist.

The transcriptionist transcribes variety of Cardiac health reports and these include:

• Discharge reports.
• Cardiac Medical history.
• Physical examination reports of heart patients.
• Cardiac Operative reports.
• Consultation reports from Cardiologist.
• Diagnostic-imaging reports like ECG, MUGA scan, X-ray and Ultrasound.
• Post operative cardiac progress reports.
• Referral letters.

The cardiology transcriptionist must be well trained in medical terminology, especially in cardiology and should have good knowledge of:

• Anatomy and physiology of heart
• Cardiac diagnostic procedures.
• Pharmacology.
• Cardiac Treatment assessments.
• Cardiac terminology and able to translate cardiology jargon.
• Standard Cardiology reference handbook.

The cardiology transcriptionist should be skilled enough to spot errors in transcribed reports because these can be carried forward in the treatment and seriously harm the health of the patient. The transcriptionist should also have good transcribing speed, to shorten the turn around time, as much as possible. This helps concerned cardiologist to deliver the requisite treatment to the patient quickly and enhance patient care. HIPAA compliance norms make it necessary for the health care providers and their business associates like transcription service providers to protect confidential patient health information. It is moral duty of the cardiology transcriptionist to maintain the secrecy of the patient information as per HIPAA norms.


Cardiology Transcription enhances patient care.


Jason Gaya


Read more on Cardiology Transcription at, www.cardioscribes.com

Cardiology Transcription Outsourcing- Boon to Hospitals

The cardiac health care industry is growing at a rapid pace. As a result the hospitals and health centers, which specialize in cardiac care, need better infrastructure and more trained staff to efficiently manage patient health records. The documentation process should be such that all the cardiac records of patients are created and stored in safe and secure manner, and retrieved conveniently whenever the need arises.

To do this efficiently, the hospitals should to have in-house transcription house that has state-of-art computer systems, transcribing machines and highly skilled transcriptionists. This additional setup is quite expensive and reduces overall efficiency and productivity of the health facility. The cardiology transcription outsourcing provides the right solutions by offering many benefits to the heath care facilities and they are:

• The transcription service providers take care of all the transcription needs of the hospitals. This means that the hospitals do not have to spend money on costly transcription infrastructure.
• The Human resources department of the health facility does not have to allocate time, effort and resources on the transcriptionists. This reduces the manpower overheads.
• The cardiology transcription service providers are generally HIPAA compliant and it becomes easy for the heart hospital to outsource the medical transcription to them at a cheaper price, without compromising the quality standards of the transcribed reports.
• The transcribed reports remain available on the providers’ server for two years. Any old medical record can be easily retrieved and sent to multiple destinations through internet. This all is done is highly secure manner through a system of encrypted files and passwords.
• The transcribed reports are available to users in rapid turn around time. The full fledged infrastructure and skilled manpower make it possible to cut drastically the process time and at same time maintain high accuracy by adopting quality audits on a regular basis.
• The cardiology transcription service provider takes care of documentation process through an in built communication system with the client through fax, emails, tracking reports, quality control feedback and billing to maintain a seamless connectivity and ensure that there is no communication gap, which slows down the whole process.
• The electronic exchange and storage of the patient health information is kept highly confidential by adhering to HIPAA norms. The transcription service has in built safety mechanisms, which ensure that all the health data processed is safe and secure, and in no way creates liabilities for the hospitals in form of lawsuits or fines for non-compliance of HIPAA norms.

Thus, cardiology transcription outsourcing eliminates the burden of medical documentation on hospitals and allows them to allocate their precious time and resource to other critical areas. This helps them to achieve the desired levels of excellence in providing the patient care.

Cardiology transcription improves the quality of patient care through better documentation of patient health information.

Jason Gaya,

Read more on cardiology transcription at, www.cardioscribes.com

Integrating Cardilogy Transcription with EMR to Create a Better Documentation System

Cardiology transcription is a process in which the health information of the patient is dictated, stored and transmitted to a transcriptionist as voice file. This is converted into an electronic format like a computer text file and sent back to the physician, who stores it in his or her computer, for later use.

The EMR or Electronic medical record is medical documentation system in which the information of the patient is directly fed into the computer by selecting related terms from pre-structured point-and-click templates. The doctor simply points and clicks on the appropriate clinical terms from the available choices to enter medical observations of the patient.

Electronic medical record or electronic health record is gaining in importance as it allows the doctors to store and manage efficiently voluminous protected health information in safely. The information can be retrieved easily whenever needed. The medical information of a particular patient stored by one doctor can be easily used or updated by another doctor during the course of treatment. This provides a greater flexibility to the treatment process. As this form of documentation process has lesser human interference it is prefered by tech savvy doctors over medical transcription.

But cardiology transcriptionists can bridge this gap between these two forms of medical documentation systems to create more efficient system where both of them complement each other. The transcriptionists provide the trained eyes and are better trained to process the information without errors. Also extra safe guards like, quality control audits ensure high accuracy rates in the cardiology transcription. This feature is missing in the EMR as everything depends on what the doctor enters into the template with no crosschecks in place. Wrong information entered can be carried forward or used by other doctors.

Further the output from templates is too canned and identical in EMR. It loses individuality for each patient and this shortcoming can be well addressed in the transcription process where the description of the patient is vividly converted into a detailed electronic record that is customized to address medical requirement of the patient. Some doctors prefer EMR while other prefer medical transcription due to their own advantages and disadvantage that these two form of documentation offer.

But transcriptionists can play a pivotal role by helping the medical fraternity to harmonize EMR with medical transcription by providing the much needed reliability in form of trained eyes and human instinct. By synchronizing both these documentation systems it is possible create a better and larger medical documentation system, which efficiently manages the protected health information of the masses in accost effective manner and at same time adhere to HIPPA norms.

Cardiology transcriptionists can bridge the gap between cardiology transcription and EMR to create a better documentation process.

Jason Gaya

Read more on cardiology transcription, on www.cardioscribes.com

Cardiology Transcription- Using Six Sigma to Improve the Quality and Productivity

Whenever a heart patient visits his or her cardiologist, all the medical observations are dictated, stored and sent to a cardiology transcription services provider. Here a transcriptionist listens to the voice file and converts into a computer text file. This electronic file is sent back to the cardiologist for future reference.

But this system is prone to errors in spite of quality norms followed by the transcription services provider. The voice quality of the file may not be proper and it requires the transcriptionist to spend more time to grasp it or there might be errors while converting the voice into electronic text. This all reduces the overall efficiency of transcription process and puts the lives of the patient at risks due to errors in the medical documentation process.

This is where the Six Sigma can play a pivotal role in enhancing the efficiency of the cardiology transcription process by eliminating the recurrent errors that inhibit the productivity of the process. The Six Sigma is basically a quality control program that consists of the management and technical strategies. The management aspect of the strategy sees to fact that all the set goals are realized successfully and that the success is sustained over a period of time. The technical part of the program ensures that process is analyzed sharply and all the bumps or shortcomings are effectively removed by adopting a strategy that measures, analyzes, improves and controls the quality of the cardiology transcription process.

As cardiology transcription involves daily conversion of data on a voluminous scale, it very difficult to keep track on each and every mistake committed in spite of well trained transcriptionist and a quality control department, which oversees the overall quality of the process. Looking minutely into each and every mistake is not possible as it slows down the whole process and hinders the timely dispatch of the transcribed reports back to the cardiologist.

The Six Sigma provides great solution to this problem by creating an inbuilt safety mechanism in the process. This automatically removes the errors from transcription process, like voice quality, conversion of voice into text or any other errors, which slows down the process and same time reduces the quality of final output. Thus Six Sigma is a boon for cardiologist, heart patients and transcription services provider as it lowers turn around time and increases the accuracy of the transcribed report. The transcription services provider, benefits from increase in productivity due to better quality and at same time, cardiologist is able to provide better and timely treatment to his or her patients.

Six Sigma governs the productivity and quality of transcription process.

Jason Gaya

For more information on Cardiology transcription, visit, www.cardioscribes.com

Cardiology Transcription- Ensures Good Vascular Health

Cardiology transcription is specialized branch of medical transcription that deals with creation, transfer and storage of vascular health records of the patients. When a patient visits hospital or healthcare facility, the doctor, after proper diagnosis, dictates all observations and records them in a recording device. This recorded voice is sent to a transcriptionist, who converts this voice into a computer text file. This text file is sent back to the doctor, who can now easily store it in his or her computer and retrieve it easily, whenever needed during the course of treatment.
The transcriptionist should be well versed in cardiac terminology and have good knowledge about the cardiovascular system of the body so that he or she can easily understand the dictation and convert it into an error free, electronic text. When it comes to cardiology transcription following types of medical reports are generally, transcribed:

• MUGA scan- It is known as Multi Gated Acquisition Scan and uses a radioactive marker to study the cardiac cycle of the patient in form of images taken from a gamma camera.


• Echocardiogram- Sonar technology is used to create real time three or two dimensional images of the heart to study cardiovascular diseases.


• Ultrasound Imaging- Ultrasound waves are used to create the images of heart and blood vessels to study cardiovascular diseases.


• Cardiac Stress test- The cardiac pumping capacity and flow of arterial blood to the heart is noted during a treadmill test.


• Holter Monitoring- The electrical signals from the heart are continuously noted through series of electrodes placed on the chest. This is used to observe the heart condition, when round-the-clock monitoring is necessary.


• Carotid Duplex- Ultrasound waves are used to study blood flow through Carotid arteries and check for blood clots, blockages or built up plaque, inside the artery.


• Pacemaker Evaluations- The pacemaker evaluation is done to know about the effect of the pacemaker to correct slow or fast heartbeat and as an aid to the heart after cardiac operation.

Cardiology transcription helps the cardiologist to maintain detailed medical records of their patient’s heart condition. This information is protected by the HIPAA regulations. The transcription service provider follows the stringent HIPAA laws when the confidential vascular health information of the patient is either stored or exchanged between doctor and transcriptionist. The transcribed report offers the doctor a valuable feedback during the course of cardiac treatment and makes it easy for them to prescribe the right medication or procedure so that patient recovers completely from the heart disease.

Cardiology Transcription Helps the cardiologist to precisely document the vascular health records of the patient.

Jason Gaya

Read more at, www.cardioscribes.com