As new innovations continue to change the ways we work, radiology has a lot to gain from adopting new technology with confidence. But the biggest potential impact comes from deeply integrated solutions—not discrete, siloed tools that only make workflows more complex.
Previously, we’ve shared our insights on the challenges facing radiology, from workloads and backlogs to the perpetual pressure to reduce costs and find efficiencies. Today, those priorities remain critically important and the challenges faced in diagnostics only seem to intensify. Workflow gains are offset by the rise in chronic diseases and continued staff shortages – and the only way to meaningfully transform radiology is by extending the benefits of new workflows as widely as possible.
With Augnito, we’ve seen the most significant impact from AI-powered speech recognition that’s integrated with the systems radiologists and teleradiology providers already use every day.
The benefits of AI speech recognition in radiology
In the past few years, AI has been widely adopted across multiple industries and for a variety of tasks. These include data handling, generating content, and automating the routine tasks that take time away from more skilled work where the human touch is essential.
Healthcare is no different. Adopting a technology like speech recognition using AI has the potential to deliver considerable benefits, not just to individual users but entire Trusts and, ultimately, patients. These include:
- More accurate reporting
- Increased efficiency and faster workflows
- Managed security and compliance with cloud hosted solutions
- A reduced risk of errors
- More agility and the ability to report from anywhere.
However, while healthcare can unlock the same benefits as enterprises, the barriers to adoption are substantially different.
Making AI more accessible for radiology
In May 2024, The Royal College of Radiologists highlighted several major barriers to the adoption of AI. These included workforce shortfalls, outdated IT infrastructure, and educating radiologists to use new AI tools effectively. The report also emphasised the need for robust governance frameworks to bring control to the way new technologies are implemented, adopted and maintained.
Unlike other sectors, radiology’s adoption of AI is potentially hamstrung by the financial realities and organisational efficiencies of how healthcare works today.
In part, this can be addressed by making AI-powered solutions more accessible and adaptable. Augnito, for example, integrates sophisticated AI into a refreshingly straightforward and easy to use frontend. Radiologists can start with Augnito on any device with little or no training and, since Augnito is hosted in the cloud, there’s no need to be limited by an existing IT infrastructure.
Simultaneously, the time-savings achieved by Augnito lead to direct cost savings – on average, switching to speech recognition for reports (as opposed to slow manual transcription) creates an efficiency gain of around 5%. This could save £100,000s across an entire Trust, resources that can be repurposed into addressing the more fundamental barriers to transformation like legacy IT.
Integrating AI speech recognition with RIS/PACS
Another way we’re making AI more accessible in radiology is through our longstanding partnerships with leading Picture Archiving & Communication System (PACS) and Radiology Information System (RIS) providers.
Augnito has been integrated by Hexarad into its radiology reporting platform, empowering radiologists with a faster, more flexible way of reporting, reflecting Hexarad’s forward-thinking approach and position as Radiology Technology Innovator of the Year. In practice, Hexarad’s improvements to radiology workflows are positively impacting patients. An implementation in North West Anglia created time savings of up to 80 minutes per patient and Hexarad enables 30% more MSK scans per hour with its streamlined workflow including Augnito.
Similarly, Augnito is integrated with Intelerad’s PACS reporting, bringing voice recognition options into the reporting process. Intelerad’s InSight PACS is an established leader in the space, recognised Best in KLAS for the UK and Ireland PACS category in 2024.
At this year’s UK Imaging and Oncology (UKIO) congress 2024 in Liverpool, representatives from Intelerad and Hexarad presented discussions on trends, best practice, and the future of radiology. They were joined by other high-profile Scribetech partners with Augnito embedded into their solutions, including:
- Aptvision Ltd, with their e-referral portal, delivering better patient outcomes, reducing workloads for medical staff
- CIMAR UK Ltd, who recently joined forces with NHS England to deliver the AI Development Platform Pilot at Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust that will enable the deployment of AI in medical imaging across the NHS
- Fujifilm Healthcare UK, who have integrated Augnito into their Universal Reporting module and presented this at UKIO along with new ultrasound imaging innovations and live demonstrations on its DeepInsight AI technology
- Magentus, with a new Managing Director at their UK helm and a team supporting more than 25 million imaging events each year across 700+ locations with its Cris Radiology Information System
- OpenRad Services UK Ltd – Biotronics 3D, showcasing its cloud-based, Augnito speech enabled remote reporting platform that includes the functionalities of a PACS, RIS and diagnostic 3D visualisation as distinct subscription packages with secure access from anywhere and from any device.
The integration of Augnito Voice Services into these partners’ platforms reflects the continued growth of Augnito AI powered speech recognition across radiology. While Scribetech has been an approved NHS solutions provider for over two decades, it brought Augnito to the UK market as a disruptive technology with a view to democratise the use of speech recognition across the continuum of care through Augnito’s value advantage – a better and more cost effective way for healthcare professionals to leverage the cloud and AI, to easily transform their patient data workflows. Now, 30 months later, Scribetech supports more than 2,000 UK radiologists who have switched to Augnito – through the company’s partnerships and direct channels. This year’s UKIO theme and message ‘Vision and Values: Putting People First’ resonates with the positive effect and impact that Augnito has had and is having on radiologists, and on patient imaging and diagnostics.
Learn more about Augnito
Interested in becoming an Augnito Spectra reseller, or an Augnito Voice Services integration partner? Contact us. See how Augnito makes cloud-based AI benefits more accessible to radiologists. Request a demo.
Time-saving is often the biggest promise of replacing slow transcription with smart speech recognition—and it’s not a unique claim. With an audience of overworked healthcare professionals, almost every new technology claims to drastically reduce admin time, but working faster isn’t where the real value lies.
If every healthcare professional worked faster, we’d begin to make progress on backlogs, waiting lists and bed shortages. However, this is a drop in the ocean given the chronic understaffing the NHS is facing—and the danger of speed is that it undermines the quality of care delivered. At the same time, the hours saved every day are only important if that time can be spent wisely—to listen, think carefully, and safeguard positive patient outcomes.
Speech recognition can save healthcare professionals up to an hour every single day. But what really matters is the way in which this time is repurposed to improve outcomes.
The persistent barrier of bureaucracy
There are few jobs without a seemingly endless amount of bureaucracy but, in healthcare, the stakes are higher. When you spend excess time on transcription and moving pieces of data around patient records, this is all time taken away from skilled, important work.
According to a survey from staffing app Florence, 20% of NHS and social care managers say they spend 7-8 hours on admin every day. Around 40% said this impacts patients with 30% naming documentation and record keeping specifically. Crucially, 35% feel that outdated technology causes more time wasting.
In this context, it’s only natural that many NHS trusts and private healthcare providers are turning their attention to new technology that claims to reduce admin time. However, these headline time savings aren’t always what they claim to be.
The reality of time savings and measurable value
When comparing technologies, it’s tempting to imagine a direct correlation between time and money savings. We’ve previously written about hidden costs and the challenge of measuring value but even the promise of an hour saved per person, per day, must be understood in its proper context.
A technology like speech recognition helps users reclaim an hour every day, on average. So where is this time currently being spent? With some solutions, it’s not actually time saved—it’s time that’s just moved to checking for accuracy as well as other tedious admin tasks.
From the outset, it’s easy for time savings to be displaced onto training and adoption. Unwieldy solutions may require extensive face-to-face training. In many cases, this significantly reduces the real-world time-saving you can expect. At the same time, ongoing training and support can quickly undermine efforts to work faster and more flexibly. If a user must wait for speech recognition dictionaries to be manually updated every time a new drug name appears, there’s a risk that the user will be working more slowly than ever before.
By automating transcription and documentation tasks, clinicians can save valuable time that can be redirected toward patient care. This reduces work-related stress, improves work-life balance, and influences outcomes in three key ways:
#1 More Time for Patient-Centric Care: With less admin, clinicians have more time to focus on their primary responsibility—providing patient care. This extra time at the bedside allows for better communication, addressing patient concerns, and building stronger patient-clinician relationships.
#2 Timely and Accurate Diagnoses: Accurate and comprehensive documentation supports better-informed patient-care planning, improved medication management and less error prone decision-making. When clinicians have access to detailed timely patient records, they’re able to make more accurate diagnoses and develop safer, effective, treatment plans.
#3 Enhanced Patient Satisfaction: Patients appreciate the convenience and efficiency of prompt and accurate clinical documentation and are more likely to adhere to their treatment plans and follow-up requirements. This in turn contributes to more efficient and timely patient journeys and ultimately to better care outcomes.
Similarly, a new way to capture clinical records, reports and notes is only effective if it’s closely connected to other clinical systems, reducing the risk of errors associated with manual data entry or with data (miss)-routing by systems that don’t integrate with each other. While users might be able to capture notes up to four times faster with speech compared with manual typing, or using an outsourced transcription provider, this may be limited to a given interface. It’s vital that the information captured is right first time, before it is securely sent to wherever it needs to be—from/to patient records, healthcare colleagues, or patients.
How Augnito Spectra turns time into value
Augnito Spectra delivers over 99% accurate medical speech recognition to where it’s needed. An easy-to-use, AI-powered, cloud-hosted platform that saves time compared to manual typing or transcription. What makes it unique is the way it then safeguards time savings so they can be spent improving patient outcomes.
With Augnito Spectra, users can dictate notes and reports directly into the clinical record system from any device. Data is seamlessly and securely routed to other systems as soon as it’s ready, rather than it being delayed due to manual repetitive re-entry. All with unmatched accuracy for any English accent or dialect, with no need for lengthy voice training, so every user can maximise their time savings.
Augnito Spectra is also backed by the service and support that only comes from a team with over two decades experience in delivering transcription services to the NHS. From ongoing product updates to in-app help, a guided tour, and always-available support, Augnito ensures that time isn’t just saved on digital transcription—it’s also saved every time a new feature is used or help is needed.
Learn more about Augnito
See how Augnito Spectra creates compounding time savings across every part of your daily routine. Request a demo to try Augnito Spectra for 7 days and see the benefits for yourself.