Further to my thoughts on VR of yesterday, I've now looked at the IBM
healthcare vocabulary. I find it remarkable in several ways. It recognizes
'electrophysiological' and 'inmmunohistochemical' off its own bat, and is
good about things like abbreviations, phrases like '140 over 90' (for which,
if it is in a good mood, it prints 140/90), and mg/100ml and '3cm x 2cm' --
many of which take time and effort to get through to a standard VR program.
Also remarkable is that, contrary to universal convention, it uses an
initial cap for every drug name, whether generic or manufacturer's! I can't
see that many will be happy to write 'I prescribed daily Aspirin (much
though Bayer might approve), Bendrofluazide, and Atenolol . . . ' .
Picking words from the BNF to test it gave me poor results; like Ian, I
could not get it to recognize a number of standard generic names, and when I
read it the generic names of the cephalosporins listed there, it did exactly
what Ian describes below. Incidentally, it still has 'acyclovir' instead of
'aciclovir' (spelling changed 2? 3? years ago?), so this is evidently an
incompletely updated version of the old, formerly very expensive, health vocab.
Frankly, I am surprised at the practical difficulty we are both having. I do
not believe VR's time has yet come, for most of us, but it is certainly
capable of better performance than this.
At 08:07 PM 6/3/98 +0100, you wrote:
>In article <[log in to unmask]>, John Apps
><[log in to unmask]> writes
>>I've been asked to review Via voice Gold with the extra healthcare vocab. I
>>may be doing something wrong, but unless there is almost absolute silence
>>(except for me prattling away!) it don't work too well. Lots of garbage
>>with the occasional intended result. I've adjusted the mic every which way
>>and successfully completed the enrollment several times (screw alice in
>>wonderland), so the problem is a bit of a mystery. Is it just that the
>>software is still a bit primitive or is it me? There is no way I could use
>>this at the surgery with all the background noise. It also really slows
>>down Word if you load the facility to dictate straight into Word. I had
>>this vision of dictating & saving referrals which could then be tidied up
>>by the secretary and sent. Comments and thoughts please.
>I use NaturallySpeaking, and it's good, but seems to be a bit fussy
>about mike quality. Perhaps a new mike?
>--
>Ian Bowns
>Senior Research Fellow
>Health Policy and Management
>School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR)
>University of Sheffield
>Regent Court
>30 Regent Street
>Sheffield
>S1 4DA
>Tel; +44 (0)114 2220742
>Fax; +44 (0)114 2220798
>E-mail; [log in to unmask] (work)
>
>
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