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Around 40% of England’s health services, represented by 6 procurement hubs, last week collectively agreed long-term contract frameworks with suppliers of speech- driven reporting solutions, including speech recognition.

The contracts cover 200 NHS Trusts and were negotiated on their behalf by six procurement hubs, led by Yorkshire and Humber Collaborative Procurement Hub. Procurement hubs buy services for groups of hospitals, ambulance, mental health and other trusts to secure better deals through bulk purchasing. “Any of these trusts can now adopt this contract immediately without having to do their own procurement or return to the open market,” says Mark Miller, Managing Director of Dictate.

The procurement hubs advertised three contracts speech recognition, digital dictation and outsourced transcription as part of a so-called Dictate. It’s software, which is powered by Nuance speech recognition, is the only supplier in the agreement to supply all three services.“We are the only supplier under the Framework Agreement to offer a complete, unified package of speech recognition, digital dictation and outsourced transcription,” Mark says. “Trusts can go for all of these in a single software package.”Framework Agreements are drawn up when there is an ongoing, high demand for specific services, according to Mark. He says he is already receiving sales enquiries, despite landing the agreement just a few weeks ago, and expects to have his first orders within weeks.

“Many of the hospitals have wanted to buy these services,” he says. “We have had quite a lot of approaches. To consolidate that, we have arranged to go to meet with all the hospitals in each area that are interested.” The increased productivity clinicians experience after adopting dictation and transcription software is among the reasons Mark gives for Dictate. It’s success. Another is two practising doctors, who sit on Dictate. It’s board of directors, developed the software. “From both a clinical and an administrative point of view, NHS Trusts using our software are more efficient, which results in better frontline treatment for patients,” Mark says. “Doctors, in particular, prefer our software as it requires simple dictation through any of a variety of devices, requiring no change to their existing working practices.”

Source: HealthTech

You can discuss more about Speech Recognition and related topics in our Speech Recognition Group.