Speech Technology in the Dutch Health Care: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

This study investigates the opportunities of speech technology in Dutch hospitals, and to what extent speech technology can be used for documentation. Furthermore, we clarify why speech technology is used only marginally by Dutch hospital staff. We performed interviews where speech technology users, managers in hospitals and software suppliers were contacted as participants. We then transcribed our interviews and synthesized the pros and cons of speech technology as well as major barriers for the adoption. Our results show various influencing factors that could be clarifications for the fact that only 1% of the medical staff uses speech technology in the Netherlands. The major reasons we found are: speech technology usage at only radiology and pathology departments, \emph{smarttexts} and \emph{smartphrases} of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) compete with speech technology, caregivers have to adjust their way of working which evokes resistance, lack of central authorization at Dutc h hospitals and finally, financial barriers. Our results show that speech technology works for radiology and pathology as a tool for documentation, but is found less useful for other departments. For the remaining departments, different applications show potential, such as structured reporting.