CSR Solutions at the Pittsburgh Medical Center
L&H Speech Recognition for Medicine Making Headlines: University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) expects to deploy L&H’s Clinical Reporter for Pathology solution department-wide and that several transcription companies have already signed up for L&H’s Clinical Transcriber, a telephony and Internet-based speech service, announced earlier this year.
L&H ANNOUNCES NEW CONTRACTS FOR ITS SPEECH SOLUTIONS WITH LEADING HEALTHCARE INSTITUTIONS AND VENDORS
(posted with permission)
BURLINGTON, MA — July 21, 1999 — Lernout & Hauspie (NASDAQ: LHSP) (EASDAQ: LHSP) (L&H™ ), a worldwide market leader in speech and linguistic technology, products and services, today announced new deployments and contracts for its speech and language technology solutions for healthcare. The company announced that the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) expects to deploy L&H’s Clinical Reporter for Pathology solution department-wide and that several transcription companies have already signed up for L&H’s Clinical Transcriber, a telephony and Internet-based speech service, announced earlier this year. L&H also announced that it has upgraded its line of PC-based medical speech recognition software with its new L&H Voice Xpress 4 speech recognition engine, along with new pricing and specialties.
L&H’s medical offerings are based upon client or server-based software that recognizes natural speech and converts it to text and data, reducing transcription costs, report turnaround time and incomplete documentation. Today’s news follows similar new customer announcements made in recent months that underscore the growing demand among healthcare institutions and vendors for L&H’s speech solutions to improve the bottom line and quality of patient care.
"We are pleased to add the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, recently named one of the top 12 healthcare institutions in the country by US News & World Report, to the list of distinguished healthcare facilities that use our speech recognition solutions," said Anatoly Tikhman, President of L&H’s Applications Division. "Today’s announcement with UPMC and a variety of transcription companies demonstrate how cutting-edge corporations are applying our speech technology to simplify patient documentation and make it instantly available to relevant parties in the healthcare enterprise."
Broad Agreement to Deploy and Develop Speech Technology with UPMC
UPMC’s deployment of L&H Clinical Reporter for Pathology solution is part of a broad research and development agreement between the University and L&H. In the Fall of 1999, UPMC expects to deploy multiple networked L&H Clinical Reporter stations to voice-enable pathology reporting for an estimated 50,000 laboratory specimens per year. In addition to deploying L&H’s voice-driven reporting solutions, the two organizations will devote personnel and resources to work together on future generations of the L&H Clinical Reporter for Pathology product line. This agreement with UPMC, the leading healthcare pathology informatics division in the nation, is an impressive addition to L&H’s community of over 400 customer sites and is expected to help L&H strengthen its healthcare offerings.
"We look forward to utilizing L&H’s speech solutions in our effort to make UPMC’s Pathology department a leader in the use of cutting-edge technologies," said Dr. Michael Becich, Director of Pathology Informatics, UPMC Health System. "This agreement will allow us to provide valuable feedback to L&H’s development team, an arrangement that will benefit us directly as customers and ensure that L&H’s Clinical Reporter remains the leading speech to data solution on the market."
L&H Announces Medical Contracts
L&H Clinical Reporter is an interactive, networked reporting solution that lets doctors instantly access patient records and create complete, HCFA-compliant reports using continuous speech and natural language voice commands. The L&H Clinical Reporter solution, available in emergency medicine, pathology, primary care and radiology editions, incorporates medical knowledge bases that prompt the user through report templates, ensuring that documentation is complete and instantly available.
Telephony & Internet-based Speech Solutions for the Dictation and Transcription Market
L&H also announced several new contracts for its L&H Clinical Transcriber service, a speech processing system designed to increase transcription throughput for healthcare institutions. L&H’s Clinical Transcriber Service enables users to simply dictate into a standard telephone, mobile handheld recording device, or PC-based Wave file recording microphone. Dictation received over the telephone or Internet via an uploaded Wave file is captured and processed at a call center by advanced speech recognition software tailored to various medical specialties. Applying speech recognition technology to medical dictation and transcription substantially increases document throughput, service availability and savings. The following vendors have agreed to deploy L&H Clinical Transcriber:
- Accurate Typing Services, Inc., located just outside of New York City, is one of the largest independently owned and operated medical transcription services nationwide with a client base primarily consisting of community hospitals and large multi-facility health care systems. Their field of expertise is medical records and radiology, offering extremely fast turnaround times. Accurate Typing is on the cutting edge of technology, as evidenced by its investments in capital equipment, new innovations, and its recent agreement with L&H to integrate continuous speech recognition with traditional medical transcription.
- Sten-Tel® Inc., located in Springfield, MA, is a national transcription service provider which utilizes and sells its own patented dictation and transcription systems to provide automated, state-of-the-art services globally to the medical, legal, law enforcement, insurance and corporate markets. With 40 system installations nationwide, Sten-Tel continues to deploy advanced technologies, such as speech recognition, to optimize its turnkey system, both for transcription service providers and their clients.
- In addition to these transcription service companies, L&H has also partnered with Digital Voice Inc. (DVI), the leading Windows dictation company. DVI manufactures the industry's leading Windows NT digital dictation system, DVI VoicePower 2000. Physicians dictate, mostly over telephones, into VoicePower, which digitizes the voice and manages its transmission to transcriptionists. Users of the DVI VoicePower 2000 digital dictation system will now have the option to run physician dictations through L&H Clinical Transcriber, so that reports can efficiently be edited following speech recognition, rather than having to be transcribed entirely.
L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine Gets New Engine, Specialties & Pricing
L&H also announced that it will be upgrading its L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine product family to the new Voice Xpress 4 engine. L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine enables doctors and other healthcare professionals to quickly and easily create, format and edit documents in Microsoft Word or other Windows-based applications using continuous speech. The product is available in the industry’s broadest range of medical specialties and includes advanced Natural Language Technology for editing and formatting by voice. The new Version 4 engine will add breakthrough features to the product line, such as a substantially reduced set-up and "enrollment" time, a simplified user interface and significantly higher accuracy rates. These new features, combined with support for digitally recorded speech from the Olympus DS-150 and other a digital recording devices, allow users to successfully dictate accurate text shortly after opening the software package.
L&H Announces Medical Contracts Page 3
Additionally, the company has introduced a new Pediatrics specialty and packaged its products into new offerings. The L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine, Medical Compendium Edition, formerly called L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine, General Medicine Edition, is now available for $499. The L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine, Mental Health Edition is available for $599 and the newly created L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine, Specialty Suite Edition is available for $799. The Specialty Suite edition contains all 13 separate specialty versions in one package. Healthcare professionals who purchase the Specialty Suite can choose from the following: Internal Medicine, Primary Care, Radiology, Emergency Medicine, General Surgery, Neurology, Oncology, Pathology, Pediatrics, Mental Health, Orthopedics, Neonatology and Cardiology. Finally, L&H will offer an L&H Voice Xpress for Verticals Mobile Option, an upgrade to receive the Olympus DS-150 digital recorder, for $199. L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine products are sold through resellers and VARs. Interested parties can find more information about L&H’s reseller program and products by calling 800-634-8723 ext. 5268.
About Lernout & Hauspie
Lernout & Hauspie (L&H) is a global leader in advanced speech and language solutions for vertical markets, computers, automobiles, telecommunications, embedded products, consumer goods and the Internet. The company is making the speech user interface (SUI) the keystone of simple, convenient interaction between humans and technology, and is using advanced translation technology to break down language barriers. L&H’s products and services originate in four basic areas: automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), digital speech and music compression (SMC) and text-to-text (translation). For more information, please visit Lernout & Hauspie on the World Wide Web at www.lhs.com or www.lhsl.com.
This Press Release contains forward-looking information, including but not limited to statements involving L&H’s view of the evolution of speech and language technology in the healthcare industry, that L&H’s products will work according to specifications and that such products will be successful in the market, and that its partnerships will be successful. Factors which could cause material differences to these forward looking statements include known and unknown risks, including without limitation: the uncertainty of new product development, including the risk that newly introduced products may contain undetected errors or defects or otherwise not perform as anticipated, the early stage of development of the speech and language technology markets, uncertainty of market growth, rapid technological change and intense competition, as well as other risks set forth in L&H’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. L&H cautions readers not to place undue reliance upon any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. L&H expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any such statements to reflect any change in the L&H’s expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstance on which any such statement is based.
All product names and trademarks mentioned herein are trademarks of L&H or their respective owners.