In a nice expose on the need for speech recognition on mobile devices: Accurate speech recognition: mHealth’s Holy Grail for docs on Fierce Mobile Health covers off the need for the inclusion of speech in the mHealth future. As they discovered
Doctors constantly tell me how much they love their iPhones and Android tablets, but they also complain about the difficulty of data input. Few find the touchscreen keyboard handy for inputting notes or updating their comments about patient progress. Most use the devices as data viewers.
Offering up MedMaster Mobile as a good example of integrating speech into a mobile healthcare application and speaks to the power and value that speech recognition brings to mobile devices in healthcare to ensure usability and quality data capture.
The article includes a good list of checkpoints when considering speech for the mobile platform including
- Voice quality – The primary consideration in getting good results
- Connectivity – if you rely on cloud based services you need a reliable good quality connection
- Accuracy – with good voice quality will achieve the right results
- Editing – one of the more challenging aspects is an easy way to edit any mistakes that do occur
So Speech Recognition is the secret ingredient to making mobile devices catch-on with clinicians and will transition these great mobile devices from cool but limited practical application to rock solid mobile tool set for mHealth
