With ‘vital’, integrated speech recognition, powered by Augnito, Intelerad InSight PACS transformed Milton Keynes’ radiology reporting to increase ease of use, save time, and reduce costs.
When the Milton Keynes University Hospital (MKUH) imaging department needed to replace its speech-enabled RIS-based reporting with a PACS-based solution, accurate speech recognition was a must-have for its busy radiologists. The combination of the Best in Klas UK/Ireland award-winning Intelerad InSight PACSTM and AI-based Augnito Voice ServicesTM from Scribetech delivered an integrated solution that worked effortlessly from day one.
“Augnito speech recognition was a vital part of the solution. Radiologists simply cannot report in a timely, efficient manner without speech recognition,” stated Andrew Scott, Imaging IT Systems Manager at Milton Keynes University Hospital. “We had previously encountered issues inherent with the speech recognition integration and setup in our previous RIS-based reporting system. This was costing us hundreds of hours of reporting time across the year, every year.”
MKUH radiologists were faced with an unwieldy workflow which required extensive training, while integration issues became a barrier to using speech recognition effectively. Meanwhile, MKUH administrators and IT teams spent a great deal of time implementing and managing the solution, including the local IT infrastructure to support in-hospital and at-home reporting.
Augnito Voice Services was integrated into Intelerad InSight PACS, deployed to MKUH at speed, and ready to deliver significant improvements from day one.
“Intelerad InSight PACS-Based Reporting allows clinicians to focus solely on a single application for both radiology image review and reporting,” stated Liam Neill, UK and Ireland Sales Director, Intelerad. “This minimises interruptions from other workflows. The solution also allows radiologists to automatically populate elements of the report through direct interaction with images, for example measurements. In downstream systems, referring clinicians can then access much richer reports with accompanying screenshots and diagrams where required. Integrated speech recognition streamlines workflows and integrating Augnito Voice Services was refreshingly straightforward with Scribetech’s support and service.”
After contracts were signed in April 2023, Intelerad InSight PACS including Augnito speech recognition was launched within a pilot group of five MKUH users, before being rolled out to the entire department of radiologists and reporting radiographers by April 2024. The combined solution is available across hospital sites and home reporting workstations, empowering clinicians wherever they work, and is also now being deployed across three additional Trusts which constitute the Thames Valley Radiology Network.
The ability to empower and enable radiologists generally depends on the availability and accuracy and set up of integrated speech recognition. Augnito, Scribetech’s AI-based speech recognition technology, is directly integrated into Intelerad InSight PACS, offering native speech recognition with a high degree of accuracy and zero setup time for users.
“PACS-based reporting brings its own benefits and with cloud-based speech recognition through Augnito, there’s less administration and profile management.” added MKUH’s Scott. “What used to take 15-20 minutes to set up for each user is now instant. A user simply sets ‘Speech Recognition Systems, Enabled’ to “Yes” in their user settings and this is instantly available, without waiting for any set up between the PACS team and the reporter across the Trust’s workstations and the regional Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Wherever we make InSight PACS available, Augnito is available too, saving us many hours of administrative time. Many of our users also report ongoing accuracy improvements and time savings by adding their own vocabulary.”
Offering accuracy across every English accent and clinical term, Augnito speech recognition capabilities can be directly integrated into clinical systems using a flexible API and SDK. For Intelerad, this enables a technology focus on the wider system vs. integrating and supporting the speech-to-text solution.
“The Augnito team has been very responsive in all aspects of integrating, rolling out and delivering the solution,” added Arron Edwards, UK Managing Director from Intelerad. “That’s made the integration very smooth and straightforward, allowing us to focus on the elements of the PACS-based reporting product that streamline our customers’ workflows. Augnito helps them fully realise the benefits of moving to PACS.”
Scribetech, the co-creators of Augnito, offer extensive UK-based support and service to help technology partners, SaaS providers, and customers succeed. Best-in-class technology is combined with best-in-class service to help more organisations adopt speech recognition, either standalone or as part of a wider digital transformation.
“Our recent success at Milton Keynes University Hospital is testament to the power of great partnerships,” stated Shiraz Austin, Managing Director at Scribetech (UK) Ltd and Co-Founder of Augnito. “We’re committed to helping technology providers adopt the next generation of AI speech recognition – and these integrations work effortlessly, creating an even more seamless and streamlined experience for hospital IT teams and users.”
“We’re delighted to be offering the latest generation of speech recognition technology, which has integrated very smoothly into our increasingly popular PACS-based reporting solution,” concludes Intelerad’s Liam Neill. “Delivering this at Milton Keynes University Hospital – one of our primary reference sites – will also allow us to collaborate closely with clinicians as we continue to deploy the product across the Thames Valley Radiology Network and further afield.”
For MKUH, the impact of Intelerad and Augnito has been significant:
“With no profile management, reliability we can count on, and a solution that’s available everywhere we need it, we’re saving a lot of time and dealing with far less admin,” adds Milton Keynes University Hospital’s Scott. “Reporters no longer have to suffer the issues inherent with our previous RIS/speech recognition integration, unlocking many hours of extra reporting time. And as a cloud-based speech recognition solution that’s continually updated, we’re looking ahead to some new features and improvements in the coming months.”
ENDS
Notes to editors
About Scribetech and Augnito: Augnito is a secure, cloud-based, AI-driven clinical speech recognition product suite. It offers fast, easy ways to capture live clinical data on any device with 99% accuracy, support for multiple medical specialities, and no need for voice profile training. Augnito brings seamless speech recognition to daily workflows and third-party clinical systems, turning medical information into clinical documentation and making healthcare intelligence securely accessible everywhere.
Augnito was co-developed by Scribetech, a clinical voice solutions innovator, fusing 20 years of transcription and digital dictation services to the NHS, speech-to-text, and clinical coding solutions for the healthcare sector, and its own speech recognition engine with advanced voice AI technology.
About Intelerad: Intelerad is a global provider of medical imaging solutions that help streamline the flow of information while simplifying complex processes and maximizing efficiencies for medical professionals. Intelerad’s robust imaging technology empowers confident decision-making, improves access to critical health information, and gets patients the answers they need faster. For more information on Intelerad and its leading technology solutions, visit intelerad.com or follow the company on LinkedIn.
About Milton Keynes University Hospital: Milton Keynes University Hospital (MKUH) NHS Foundation Trust is a medium sized general hospital that provides a full range of acute hospital services and an increasing number of specialist services to the growing population of Milton Keynes and the surrounding areas of Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, including Luton, and the areas covered by Cherwell District Council, Oxford City Council and South Oxfordshire District Council. With around 550 beds and employing more than 4,000 staff, the hospital sees and treats more than 400,000 outpatients and over 100,000 emergency department patients each year, in addition to delivering a wide range of elective (planned) and non-elective procedures. Go to https://www.mkuh.nhs.uk/about-us for details.