Google’s launch of it’s newest phone, the Nexus One, has been met with praise and skepticism. There are many who love the speedy SnapDragon processor and the 5 megapixel camera, while others rail against its lack of differentiation from other Android OS platforms. Through all the debate, I’ve found the built in capability of Voice to Text not getting much attention. From what I’ve read of the phone so far, the voice to text appears to be surprisingly accurate, opening up the possibilities for this feature to be used for Medical Transcription services. The only problem is Google has offered Voice to Text in other platforms, and we haven’t seen similar results.
Google’s most recent history of voice to text is often highlighted by their Google Voice service. Through google voice you can get your own unique number, and use it in conjunction with your current number with added features. One of the features touted by Google Voice is the voicemail transcription service. This transcription service hasn’t faired well so far, as evident by this CNET review of the service. Hopefully this current iteration of their voice to text on their phone is a leap above their Google Voice service, and to be fair, Google Voice is still in its infancy stage and not yet “official”.
Dictation services are nothing new to the App Store. There are already plenty of applications in the App Store that have various forms of Dictation offerings. Almost all are subscription based and in the future we hope to review some of them for our readers. However, the iPhone doesn’t have built in voice to text software. My assumption is this feature will not have the capability to understand complicated medical language/terminology, as other dictation services can, but sometimes jotting down a few notes about a patient is all one needs before doing a full dictation.
This built in capability of voice to text could enable short and simple dictations and its only a matter of time before an application is released that helps enhance this feature so medical professionals can utilize it even further.
