Dictaphone Announces New Contract Wins for mdEssential; Combination of Speech Recognition and Natural Language Processing Is Physician-Friendly EMR Alternative for Clinics and Group Practices.

STRATFORD, Conn. -- Dictaphone has entered into agreements with two physician organizations for the use of mdEssential(TM), Dictaphone's alternative to traditional electronic medical record (EMR) software. Introduced just this past July, mdEssential is the first software designed to automate the clinical documentation process in clinic and physician group practice settings through a combination of voice dictation, speech recognition and natural language processing (NLP) technologies.

With mdEssential, physicians continue to record information from patient encounters using dictation, their preferred method. Speech recognition technology converts the dictation to text documents, which speeds turnaround time while it improves completeness and accuracy. Voice-driven templates, standard text blocks and the ability to reuse previously dictated information lend even greater efficiency to the process. Finally, Dictaphone's proprietary NLP software "reads" the documents, finding and extracting important medical facts such as allergies, medications, diagnoses and procedures. These facts are stored in a database that physicians can easily access, search and organize. In short, clinical documentation, reports and notes are transformed into an EMR-like resource without manual data entry.

For Western Medical Associates, a 10-practitioner multi-specialty clinic in Grand Junction, Colorado, mdEssential was the best choice for a practice that will soon need to interface with a community-based health record. The clinic, which had already been using Dictaphone's dictation software, was able to fund its mdEssential lease by eliminating transcription costs -- all 10 practitioners will now self-edit their documentation. In the process, it gained a "right-sized" EMR.

"With our new community health information network, we simply don't need an expensive and cumbersome EMR," explained Greg Coren, the clinic's administrator. "mdEssential will allow our practitioners to push important information out to the network, streamline our transcription and billing systems, and reduce our medical records costs. All of this can be accomplished without changing what our practitioners do best, which is care for patients without getting bogged down in implementation."

Mid-State Cardiology Associates, which has six locations in the Nashville, Tennessee, area, has also signed on to use mdEssential. According to executive director Bob Lloyd, mdEssential will form a necessary bridge between old and new processes at the 15-physician practice, acclimating physicians to greater technology use while respecting the way they currently prefer to document patient visits.

"We know we'll eventually move to a more complete EMR down the road, but that will require significant change," said Lloyd. "What we saw in mdEssential was first a way to go from voice to text in a very efficient manner -- something our physicians really wanted to see happen -- without changing the basics of how they function. Second, we're accumulating the data elements that are important to the practice and necessary to form an EMR, an added bonus that will begin building the foundation of our future EMR."

"We believe mdEssential is tapping into a genuine need for an alternative to the hundreds of traditional EMRs on the market," said Don Fallati, senior vice president of marketing for Dictaphone. "We're very pleased with the market traction we have received to date with this product."

About Dictaphone Healthcare Solutions Group

Dictaphone is the world's largest supplier of dictation, transcription and speech recognition systems and services that simplify and enhance the production and management of paperless electronic patient information. Through the integration of speech recognition and natural language processing within existing health information management workflow, Dictaphone systems are helping healthcare organizations save money and improve patient care by increasing the speed, accuracy and usability of their medical documentation. For more information, please visit www.dictaphone.com. or call 1-888-350-4836.