[Speech recognition in clinical routine, a pilot trial at the Zurich University Hospital]

Two systems for continuous German speech recognition were evaluated in pilot installations in a Department of Medicine. Word recognition accuracies of 92-94% were achieved one month after implementation. For standardized text the performance increased to 97%. Speech recognition proved to be economical for physicians when producing short reports, whereas for comprehensive discharge summaries no significant time savings were observed. All reports could be made available much faster by using speech recognition. However, some particle difficulties may still limit the success of comprehensive installations in clinical settings. Adequate hardware, appropriate choice of areas of application, reasonably quiet working conditions and well motivated users are essential for successful implementations.