BACKGROUND:  The healthcare sector has consistently lagged far behind other industries in utilizing information technology. Whereas other industries have adopted and implemented many IT standards for the storage, retrieval, and transmission of information, the healthcare industry as a whole is still without a uniform IT platform. The main obstacle in adopting a single standard for health records is the myriad of individual electronic platforms in use today. In addition, these electronic platforms are often unable to directly communicate with one another. Although the impact of the computer in managing healthcare information is undeniable, and even as the amount of useful clinical information grows exponentially, providers are still bound by the computer screen to retrieve and record patient information. There is now a need to reduce intermediate steps of textual data visualization on computer monitors for direct and speedy access to the EMR.

INNOVATION:  UCLA researchers have created and implemented a voice-based information communication solution and a phone service that bridges the gap between healthcare providers and any clinical information system or electronic health records. This Voice User Interface (VUI) platform reduces the intermediate steps of human to EMR interactions via computer monitors through speech recognition as the input and text-to-speech generation as the output. With this HIPAA compliant, secure IT system, healthcare providers can communicate through any land or cellular telephone line. They just pick up the phone and have a conversation with the EMR through a natural language (e.g. English, Spanish, etc) VUI, which is far superior and intuitive than the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems commonly used in the call centers of banks and other companies. The system can be built to interface with any pre-existing electronic health records platform. It is also powerful enough to provide access to patient demographics, current clinical status, documents, reports, lab data, and even allows direct verbal order-entries into the various backend ancillary systems such as radiology, clinical labs and the pharmacy.

POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS 

• Around the clock voice access to internal electronic health records and clinical information
• Voice-based order entry system for use in hospitals, clinics, labs, radiology and pharmacies
• Voice-based multi-source data capture at the point-of-care

ADVANTAGES

• Can be easily configured to interface with any existing electronic health records and clinical information platform to improve clinical workflow
• No operator-dependent learning curve
• Allows clinicians access to vital information without being at a computer screen
• Built upon highly robust state-of-the-art speech recognition software and off-the-shelf hardware
• Cheap, affordable, and accessible

DEVELOPMENT-TO-DATE:  Currently, the invention is being tested in the Brain Monitoring and Modeling Lab (BMML), UCLA Division of Neurosurgery and selected clinical units.

Reference: UCLA Case No. 2007-420