Medical records

Hôpital Montfort selects Crescendo for dictation

Hôpital Montfort, based in Ottawa, has selected Laval, Que.-based Crescendo to supply a hospital-wide document creation platform, including digital dictation, bilingual speech recognition, transcription, distribution and authentication.

With 206 beds (289 expected in 2008), the hospital boasts 100+ physicians on its active medical staff and 12 medical transcriptionists. The new integrated solution is expected to streamline the documentation workflow and accelerate the delivery of medical reports to the point-of-care.

The DigiScribe-XL suite from Crescendo will allow physicians to dictate either over the phone or from any connected PC using the new generation of Philips SpeechMikes for one-handed application and dictation control.

Patient demographic information will be automatically downloaded from the Hospital Information System into Crescendo, through an HL7 interface, eliminating the need for manual data entry and related errors.

Transcriptionists will be equipped with MedRite-IP, an advanced transcription system specifically designed for the medical transcription profession, while seamlessly managing the distribution of final reports to all appropriate recipients.

Located in Ottawa, next to the Quebec border, Hôpital Montfort serves patients in both official languages: English and French. Thanks to the Crescendo bilingual speech recognition platform, physicians will be able to dictate and seamlessly process reports in the patient’s language.

As part of this bilingual platform, the Hôpital Montfort will be the first in Canada to implement the company’s French Canadian speech recognition module, called ConText.

Developed by Crescendo and Philips Speech Recognition Systems from the analysis of hundreds of medical reports and voice samples collected throughout the province of Quebec, ConText ensures optimal recognition accuracy for French Canadian physicians who can dictate the way they are used to, at their own speed, without the need to “train” the software.

Moreover, the system is said to be compliant with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)

As part of the Crescendo Product suite, Hôpital Montfort will benefit from Crescendo Wide Area Service (CWAS), ensuring maximum confidentiality. In addition to offering advanced encryption, this unique IP-based gateway manages all files centrally so that no duplicates are kept on the local PC at any time.

“After analyzing the different solutions available on the marketplace, we came to the conclusion that CWAS was a highly reliable answer to the challenge of sharing sensitive information between individuals and departments”, said Lucie Piché, Director, Clinical Information & Decision Support Services at Hôpital Montfort.

Bi-directional HL7 interfaces will be implemented between the Crescendo platform and the Hospital Information System (Admission, Discharge, Transfer and ADT) to ensure the instant availability of up-to-date patient results and demographics to all relevant medical staff.

On the Radiology side, the Crescendo platform will integrate with the hospital’s Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) in order to accelerate the examination process. A similar interface will also be implemented in Pathology between Crescendo and the hospital’s Patient Care Inquiry module, thus enabling instant viewing of pathology reports.

“We are very enthusiastic about this new acquisition, which we believe is a giant step forward on the road to the Electronic Medical Record,” commented Ms. Piché.

About Crescendo Systems Corporation
From digital dictation and speech recognition (powered by SpeechMagic) to transcription and report distribution, Crescendo develops systems that enable the fast, cost-effective creation and management of medical documentation. As a pioneer in open standard technology and an international HL7 member since 1990s, Crescendo has allowed over 2,000 single and multi-site healthcare installations to achieve the cross-system integrations that are so critical to the quality of patient care. For more information, visit www.crescendo.com.