Dragon Medical One (DMO) Voice to Text in the Emergency Department

For an emergency department (ED) it is essential that any improvement in efficiency is made. ED capacity to see new incoming patients is often markedly reduced by admitted patients awaiting beds, however the majority of patients each day are discharged from the ED. Speeding up documentation will allow clinicians to discharge these patients more quickly. This may only be 5-10 minutes (often more) but when applied to more than 100 patients per day, the increased efficiency is enormous, in addition to improved patient satisfaction and reduced patient complaints.

To achieve faster documentation times, a Voice to Text Application called Dragon Medical One (DMO) was introduced as a pilot across the Emergency Department and four other clinical specialties at the Mackay Base Hospital for 3 months in 2021. This presentation will discuss the findings of the pilot and feasibility of using voice to text in an ED.