Alytus polyclinic is the first in Lithuania to implement a technological solution to save physicians’ time
In an attempt to make physicians’ work more efficient and to reduce the workload of filling in digital forms, Alytus polyclinic is implementing an intelligent speech recognition system. This will enable physicians to fill in the data by speech, and the AI solution will in turn convert the data into text. It is the first technological solution of this kind in the Lithuanian healthcare sector.
“Physicians and other staff often need to manage a significant amount of documentation, which has to be filled in by hand or entered into the online healthcare record system. For instance, a single general practitioner in Alytus polyclinic on average attends to 25 patients and fills in 150 fields of text in a day. This requires a significant amount of time and effort, interrupts the service of the patients, and can increase the likelihood of errors in documentation. Therefore, we decided to implement an intelligent speech recognition solution, which provides automatic speech transcription and dictation features. The physicians can use it to make notes, texts and fill in the documents,” – says Marius Jasaitis, head of Alytus polyclinic.
The speech transcription solution was developed by the Lithuanian branch of the Baltic speech technology company Tilde, and it was implemented in the polyclinic software system ESIS, developed by Varutis UAB.
The speech recognition model is based on artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which has been trained to understand 1.5 m sentences from the healthcare field. The model was tested in several stages.It was first tested by physicians with advanced computer skills. In their opinion, the transcription feature works fine, although they are able to fill in the text faster by hand.
It was then tested by polyclinic staff with less proficient computer skills. “They were the ones who demonstrated the efficiency of our solution; we received sincere, positive feedback as the physicians claimed that they had required a solution of such kind for a very long time and it significantly reduced the workload required to fill in the documentation,” – explains Renata Špukienė, managing director of the Lithuanian branch of the language technology company, Tilde.
According to R. Špukienė, this solution is flexible and adaptable to the specific needs of Alytus polyclinic staff, while such tools are actively used in German healthcare institutions: “The model is being trained and will continue to adapt to the speech intricacies of Alytus polyclinic to output increasingly precise transcription. Furthermore, the model will be introduced to necessary medical terms and phrases. The Lithuanian language speech technologies are fully developed and functional; therefore, we believe that the project will benefit Alytus polyclinic and inspire other healthcare institutions to follow suit.”
The project was financed by the Ministry of Economy and Innovation of the Republic of Lithuania within the framework of the “GovTech sprendimų skatinimas” initiative and implemented by Tilde IT UAB and Varutis UAB.
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