On May 13, 2008, at 12:55 PM, Kristopher Kinlen wrote:
I am currently dealing with the same questions / problems. I work in the clinical space where the user's hands are often gloved up and covered in fluids. Interacting with software via a touchscreen or hardware device presents sterility issues so voice is the natural solution. As simple an answer as that seems, to date, few people in the industry actually use the voice solutions that are available.
I can think of several reasons why voice commands in a surgical environment would be problematical.
The best reported reliability I've seen for a simple voice command system was around 98%, and frankly, I didn't believe that number when I saw it. Most trials involving voice to text systems report about 95% reliability, and those usually involved a period of training the software to recognize individual users' utterances.
Is ~95% reliability sufficient in the operating room? That depends, I suppose, on which functions could not be performed more reliably by the operating room staff without adding to the overall cognitive load for any one of the staff.
And if we're talking about introducing introducing slightly-unreliable functionality into a risk-sensitive, cognitive-load-sensitive process, I have to ask what *actual* improvements in surgical practice (other than reducing the cost of staffing an operating room) would come from voice command systems?
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