News
Rapid Reports and automated SNOMED coding drive efficient Histopathology reporting
The Department of Histopathology and Cytopathology at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton recently deployed GHG Software Developments Limited’s (GHG) TalkingPoint speech enabled Histopathology workflow solution for 6 users as part of a number of strategic improvements to support efficient pathology reporting.
Deployment of TalkingPoint has been driven by Dr Kerry Sleigh, Consultant Cellular Pathologist, who commented: “I had used TalkingPoint previously whilst working in Plymouth. TalkingPoint worked really efficiently there and reduced the time it took me to report cases there by about a third!
When I started working here, several of the consultants were typing their own reports as the report backlog was so bad and our secretarial team was understaffed and overloaded.
The situation now that we are using TalkingPoint is much better. Due to the nature of my speciality (GI and Liver), I am able to use TalkingPoint’s rapid reports which contributes massively to my overall efficiency.”
GHG actively incorporated suggestions from the Brighton team for improvements to the “rapid reports” function. Dr Sleigh explains: “following feedback on how we adjusted many of our report summaries according to the site of the biopsy, GHG incorporated this into TalkingPoint’s rapid reporting function. TalkingPoint now allows users to state the site of biopsy in each summary. Also, as many GI cases incorporate multiple biopsies, which can each have rapid reports, GHG adjusted TalkingPoint’s programming for us, to enable use of “multiple rapid reports in one request” to allow for each specimen in that request.”
Dr Sleigh continues: “We have made a lot of changes here which have had a significant and positive impact on our report turnaround times. We have taken on more secretarial support and we now have 6 people utilising speech recognition with TalkingPoint which has also taken some of the pressure off the secretaries.
TalkingPoint supports efficient reporting, especially when it comes to the automated SNOMED coding. That aspect is unequivocally more efficient, and I can see that I have reported more cases since we fully deployed TalkingPoint here.”
There is a business case in progress to expand TalkingPoint to the rest of the team at Brighton, including Consultant Histopathologists and Biomedical Scientists.
Malcolm Grant, Managing Director, TalkingPoint added: “TalkingPoint’s rapid report feature is where the greatest efficiency gains can be made. Users are able to create their own short-cuts and rapid reports to suit their needs and reporting style.”
Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust is a regional teaching Trust, providing general acute services to Brighton and Hove and Mid Sussex and tertiary services for patients across Sussex and the south east of England as a regional cancer centre.
The Histopathology department has a large and varied workload and plays an important role in teaching Histopathology trainees that rotate through the department as well as teaching at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School.
For further information on GHG Software Developments Limited or TalkingPoint please log onto www.talkingpoint.uk.com or telephone: +44 (0)1908 565 663.
