News
A decade of TalkingPoint at Hampshire Hospitals Pathology Department
Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has been successfully using GHG Software’s TalkingPoint Speech Recognition “process automation” technology to provide significant workflow improvements for clinicians and their support staff in the Pathology department since 2009.
HISTOPATHOLOGY REPORTING
TalkingPoint for Pathology, a highly specialised histopathology reporting “speech recognition workflow” system, was initially implemented at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital, Winchester in 2009, and they were one of the first hospitals in the UK to benefit from improved histopathology reporting directly by voice. Ten years later, Pathologists across both the Basingstoke and Winchester hospitals sites are using a much more advanced and comprehensive version of the software for histopathology and post mortem reporting, enabling hands-free reporting directly by voice into the CliniSys WinPath LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System). Utilising verbal shortcuts/”canned text” and powerful voice commands, together with single utterance RAPID reports to generate multi-sectioned text/SNOMED code entries, the voice driven workflow system makes the microscopy/post-mortem reporting processes as fast and easy as possible.
CUT-UP
More recently, following a site visit to Derriford Hospital (Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust) Pathology Department, the Hampshire team saw first-hand many of the benefits of using TalkingPoint in cut-up, and TalkingPoint has now been implemented on the CUT-UP benches at Winchester.
“We have been using TalkingPoint in cut-up for two years now,” said Adam Moore, Pre-registration Biomedical Scientist at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital.
Adam explains: “The key objective behind implementing TalkingPoint in cut-up was to save time.”
Adam has a keen interest in IT and is an advocate for lean working. He was approached by the management team at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital to take the lead in guiding the implementation of TalkingPoint in the cut-up room so that it would work effectively with the Trust’s LIMS system and workflow.
Adam goes on to explain: “With help from Malcolm Grant from the TalkingPoint team, we now have four Biomedical Scientists who can work in cut-up using the TalkingPoint workflow system. The software drives all the computer work that the MLA (Medical Laboratory Assistant) used to have to do. TalkingPoint is now doing this automatically, generating the macro reports. This gives us greater flexibility within the team, as four of us are now able to work in cut-up alone, without the need for an assistant. This means that our MLA team are now freed up to do work in other areas of the laboratory.”
Another key benefit of implementing TalkingPoint is the considerable amount of time now saved within the secretarial team as they no longer have to type up reports. This time-saving has enabled the secretarial team to offer greater flexibility; completing other administrative tasks such as minute taking, appointment setting and management of other important department documentation and correspondence.
CANCER REPORTING
In addition to driving an efficient reporting workflow for histopathology reporting and cut-up, TalkingPoint acts as a bridge between the LIMS and COSD Companion, an application that enables Consultant Histopathologists to fill in their standard datasets from which both formatted pathology reports and structured cancer registry submissions are automatically generated.
The TalkingPoint team worked with PhoenixSoft Limited, developer of COSD Companion, to automate the finishing touches to the generated reports and save and authorise those reports in the WinPath LIMS. By utilising TalkingPoint Commander’s powerful “process automation” workflow scripting capability, the two products were integrated in just a few days.
Jeff Morrison, Cellular Pathology Manager at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital comments: “This is a good example of two companies coming together to deliver the best solution for the customer. The result has significantly impacted on how quickly we can report. TalkingPoint’s scripting now bridges how we populate the COSD reports to reduce the amount of time the Pathologists have to spend completing their data input.”
Malcolm Grant, Managing Director at GHG comments: “Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is a brilliant example of where speech recognition can be used across multiple disciplines to great effect. The Trust’s employees have been able to truly benefit in terms of efficiencies of work flows and this has a knock on benefit for the hospitals patients. We are looking forwards to continuing this relationship into the next decade.”
For further information on GHG Software Developments Limited please telephone: 01908 565 663.
