AMAZON LAUNCHES ADVANCED HEALTHCARE DATA APPLICATION: AMAZON TRANSCRIBE MEDICAL

by John G. Baresky on 12/02/19

Amazon Combines Digital Savvy With Voice And Transcribing Technology To Drive Innovation In Patient Care And Healthcare Data Management 

Conversation Converted To Digital Text Technology

Amazon ( NASDAQ: AMZN ) is introducing a new healthcare application which will integrate with patient electronic health records ( EHR ).

Conversations between physicians and patients are recorded and converted into text content that populates the EHR at point-of-care. EHRs are also referred to as Electronic Medical Records ( EMR ).

Healthcare Clinical And Cost Advantages

The application, known as Amazon Transcribe Medical, will enable clinicians and patients to have more direct and meaningful dialogue that is retrievable for review at a later time. During face-to-face interactions, doctors and patients can converse without the doctor having to continually interrupt their dialogue to enter notes in the EHR or recall the details later either by memory or handwritten note which are not always easy to interpret.

Amazon Technology In Partnership With Cerner and Suki

Amazon developed the application by collaborating with Cerner, one of the world’s largest EHR companies and a startup company, Suki, that specializes in transcription technology. Currently, the Amazon Transcribe Medical program can only be used by those healthcare provider organizations and EHR platforms aligned with Amazon Web Service ( AWS or “Amazon Cloud”).

Amazon Transcribe Medical was designed to work with Amazon Comprehend Medical, an application that enables developers to work with unstructured medical text rhetoric aligned with patient symptoms and associated clinical details including drug therapy doses, diagnoses and other pivotal, finite detail essential for a well-fortified EHR patient file.

Patient Information HIPAA Compliance And Data Accuracy

The application meets HIPAA requirements which is absolutely pivotal in all things related to patient data, privacy and security. The advanced technology and testing involved with developing the program also demanded a high degree of accuracy in terms of medical terminology, punctuation and other details relevant to clinician and patient conversations.  

Microsoft, Google, Other Competitors

Advanced voice transcription technology is being pursued by numerous other healthcare software and technology companies. While Microsoft and Google have collaborations underway with various partners in this regard, there are many other companies developing solutions which could compete with Amazon, Microsoft and Google. They could launch independently or be acquired by one any one of these three companies or others to accelerate development of a marketable commercial product to be used by hospitals, health systems, medical practice groups or other healthcare provider organizations. 

Besides Google and Microsoft, these are some other competitors in the medical transcribing space threatened by Amazon Transcribe Medical:

 

• Dolbey
• Entrada
• Nuance
• Radekal
• Sonix
• SpeechRite
• WebChartMD
• Zydoc

 

Dolbey, Entrada and Nuance already interface with some EHRs but having a complete clinical and commercial solution that can be utilized by an entire hospital or health system is something on an entirely different scale. Amazon, Cerner and Suki, with Amazon Cloud as an integral resource, have the clinical, financial and technical bandwidth necessary to provide enterprise-wide medical transcription EHR programs that will have wide impact on broad based healthcare provider organizations. 

Voice Recognition Technology ( VRT ) And Transcription Technology

In healthcare and an array of other industries, advances in voice recognition and transcription technology are widely welcome and highly anticipated. These solutions speed processes, streamline recording and retrieval of information and bypass the keyboard interface which slows down processes and contributes to errors. As we have seen with smartphones, digital assistants, various remote control apparatuses and other uses of digital technology, the ability to control technical interfaces and collect, store, share data via voice is becoming a new technology standard in healthcare, businesses and homes.

Demands Of Clinicians And Healthcare Provider Organizations

As Amazon Transcribe Medical’s launch plans unfold, doctors, nurses and other clinicians, as well as healthcare administrative staff, will be eager to learn more about it. Amazon will be busy not only educating the market about it but also incorporating additional attributes into it to fulfill customer requirements and stay ahead of competitors. Companies like Microsoft, Google and others will spur their efforts to develop their own solutions to blunt momentum Amazon may build from the start.

Patient Information Data Companies

Allscripts, Cerner, Epic, Meditech and other EHR / EMR companies will have demands put on them by their customers in order to be able to accommodate VRT and transcription technology applications from Amazon and other organizations or develop equally sophisticated or better solutions of their own.

Unique Opportunities English-Speaking And Non-English Speaking Nations And Communities 

For all players in the voice medical transcription space, there will be a race to develop solutions that accommodate multiple languages including regional dialects. Healthcare is a universally global industry and a great way to drive user adoption and sales revenue is to be able to market solutions in primary and secondary markets as well as emerging markets and third world nations. 

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