In my travels as a locum tenens pathologist, I have not seen Dragon or any other speech recognition system in use by pathologists, and can only recall one client who was even considering it. Computerized speech recognition could be disastrous for a small pathology practice, if management were to use its introduction as an excuse to fire the transcriptionist, who also answers the telephone and is the de facto practice administrator as well.
Speech recognition systems depend on good microphones and on a quiet work area with minimal extraneous noise. Grossing stations are inherently noisy, and the working conditions (vibration, formaldehyde) quickly degrade microphones. Many pathologists' hospital offices are also very noisy. I'd like to get my hands on a speech recognition system, and I think I could learn it. My problem with it would be that I can type pathology reports about as fast as I can dictate them. Bob Richmond Samurai Pathologist Knoxville TN _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet