Easy-to-use backend voice-to-text capability, supported on BlackBerryR
Smartphones and Windows Mobile, offers business and healthcare significant
administrative time & cost savings
Sydney, Australia – Nov 6, 2009: BigHand, the leading voice productivity
application in the professional services community, has today launched an
innovative new Server-based Speech Recognition module aimed at organisations
looking to further streamline administrative overheads in the current
climate, or support an upturn in work as the economy recovers. The new
voice-to-text module also supports voice submission from BlackBerryR
Smartphones or Windows Mobile, alongside traditional dictation hardware. The
BigHand Server-side Speech Recognition add-on is part of the latest Version
(3.3) of BigHand’s award-winning .NET enterprise digital dictation workflow
software.
The BigHand Speech Recognition module, which utilises the Dragon
NaturallySpeakingT speech server from Nuance Communications, includes both a
“Speech Recognition only” option, where the Transcription Server sends the
resulting text back to the author, as well as a “Speech Recognition with
proofing” option where the Transcription Server sends the resulting text to
a secretary. The secretary performs any corrections, saves the document and
then submits a copy of the corrected document. Once submitted the
server-based speech file of the original author is upgraded, improving their
results going forward. The author can still correct their own speech file if
so desired.
Moving the correction of the speech file to the secretary completely removes
the time burden from the author and enables no change to their current
working practices. As a result, even though there is minimal training, the
author’s speech file continues to improve over time. In testing the
Transcription Server returned a 233 word initial recording with 178 words
correctly recognised (76.4%). After the first correction, the transcription
server improved to recognise 226 of the words (97%), and by the third
submission the Server based system recognised 232 words (99.6%).
The overall total cost of ownership of the new back-end Speech Recognition
module is estimated to be as little as one third the cost of existing
digital dictation systems with client-side Speech Recognition integrations.
The module is licensed per user or per server, with minimal training
required, no client-side installation and, subsequently, no loss of billable
time. Additional features include Citrix & Terminal Services compatibility,
document templates & bookmarks, acoustic modelling, vocabularies configured
in BigHand System Administration, default and custom speaker profiles for
different users of BigHand, and support for distributed Transcription
Servers.
Aside from the Server-side Speech Recognition module other new features
within BigHand 3.3 include:
– Document attachments & links within the workflow
– New search engine & User Interface improvements
– Support for Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 R2
– 64-bit support extended to incorporate Terminal Client
– Splitting of voice files & extended external sound file support
– New & extended API for 3rd party developers
For more information regarding over 50 new features and enhancements
announced in 3.3, or for price information for the Server-side Speech
Recognition module, please request our ‘What’s New in BigHand 3.3?’ overview
by emailing [email protected]
-ENDS-
About BigHand
BigHand is based out of Chicago, London, Sydney, and Toronto. BigHand is a
Microsoft Gold Partner, BlackBerry ISV Partner, and was voted ‘Mobile
Product of the Year’ at the CNet Business Technology Awards 2008. BigHand
also won ‘Best of Breed System of the Year’ at the Legal Technology Awards
for 2008. This year BigHand has been nominated for the 7th Annual Law
Technology News (LTN) Awards, taking place on 1st Feb 2010, as ‘Dictation
System of the Year’ and ‘Mobile Tool of the Year’. BigHand is also nominated
at the British Legal Awards 2009, taking place 3 Dec 2009, as ‘Technology
Provider of the Year’. Further information is available at www.bighand.com
