Making digital transformation possible at Mater Private Hospital

Digital transformation is the process of integrating digital technologies into different areas of an organisation, changing how it operates and providing a shift in culture, processes and technology.  

It can be traced back to the late 20th century when early automation and IT systems crashed onto the scene, and then boomed even further when the internet was invented in the 90s.  

Since then, we’ve had major developments in IT, deep learning technologies and artificial intelligence (AI), and healthcare organisations across the world are currently at different stages of their digital maturity. Some examples of how the healthcare industry is embracing digital technology include: 

• Using automation tools and mobile apps for appointment scheduling 

• Electronic prescribing  

• Employing AI for diagnosis and treatment – AI can detect diseases and illnesses early, help radiologists assess x-ray images, and help clinicians read brain scans more easily 

• Using AI to improve patient engagement – AI can assist patients in identifying symptoms and recommending the most appropriate action 

• Utilising software to collect and analyse patient data – this exposes trends in a patient’s health, helping to identify problems early and improving the quality of care 

This adoption of digital technology has played a huge part in improving and personalising patient care, boosting clinician productivity and hospital efficiency, and reducing clinician burnout within the NHS, HSE and other healthcare organisations globally. 

But what else can individual departments within healthcare do to reap the benefits of this digital era?  

In our article, we’ll go through way that pathology departments can use digital technologies to manage workflows, patient care and efficiency, and how our solutions have been a gamechanger at Mater Private Hospital. 

How G2 Speech is making waves in digital transformation for pathology departments 

For over 25 years now, we’ve been developing our speech technology products for the healthcare sector, and we’re proud to be the leading speech tech provider for the pathology market in The Netherlands, with a dominant presence in the UK and Ireland. 

Using the latest and most robust AI-powered, digital technologies, our speech recognition and workflow management solutions have helped numerous hospitals, Trusts and Pathologists improve efficiency, be more productive, and manage workflows by reducing administrative tasks. 

Putting more hours in their diary to focus on other, more pressing tasks, like analysis and interpretation.  

Take our AI workflow management solution, SpeechReport (look out for some exciting news on this soon!) as an example. It offers the complete package for all of your reporting needs from the initial dictation through to electronic distribution. Covering all reporting needs of Pathologists and Medical Scientists. As a speech recognition solution that uses Voice AI, neural networks and deep learning technology, Pathologists can shave days off the entire medical reporting process, while providing 99% accuracy.  

SpeechReport offers simple and easy-to-use document management with instant access to previously reported documents, provides instantaneous templated documents with comprehensive pathology medical dictionaries – all contributing to significantly improved document turnaround times. 

Putting G2 Speech into action at Mater Private Hospital 

A few years ago, the Pathology Laboratory Manager at Mater Private Hospital was tasked with the implementation of a speech recognition system across pathology. Even in 2013, the hospital was using analogue tapes for its digital dictation systems.  

But in a bid to improve turnaround times, cost savings and workloads, the team looked at other ways to use speech recognition and digital dictation more effectively.  

That’s where we stepped in.  

The hospital implemented back-end speech recognition, using Philips SpeechMikes and Jabra headsets for dictating. And it wasn’t long before clinicians became used to dictating in a clear, concise manner that led them to see the recognition’s full potential. 

With the introduction of SpeechReport, our speech recognition solution, the pathology department had the capacity to take on more cases in the year (from 9000 to around 12,000!), and now turns around documents in less than 24 hours.

If your pathology department could benefit from faster medical document turnaround times, find out more about our speech recognition solutions, or arrange a free, no-obligation demo!