Medical INK

I’ve been in the transcription business now for over 25 years. I remember back in 1980 taking shorthand on a steno pad when the doctor I worked for asked me to “take dictation”. Then went I got another job and he asked me to keep typing his notes, so I bought a Tandy dual floppy disk drive computer from Radio Shack (with no hard drive) and “borrowed” a copy of Word Perfect from a friend to learn on my own. He went to big tapes instead of steno dictation and I had to run to his office on my lunch hour to pick up the tapes and his stationary.

Over time, big tapes became small tapes, and pick up and delivery became the norm. In early 1990, now a real "company" we invested in the equipment necessary to accept telephone dictation – but the recordings were still on tapes and we still had to deliver the documents to our clients. Then PC Anywhere was introduced and we were at the top of the pile with “file transfers” – WOW, we could deliver electronically! But we still had to go pick up those tapes – so what good was the technology since it was only half of the circle!

We could only accept local accounts because we had to first pick up the tapes, and then be able to distribute the physical tapes to people who could come and pick them up at our office

By the late 1990’s Lanier splashed onto the market place – lets get rid of tapes and go to computer recordings. Was that neat! It only cost us $150,000 for the equipment (and a second mortgage on our house) and again only local people could call in to the computer where the recordings were located – otherwise their phone bills were astronomical! And physicians still liked their tape machines and didn’t want to give them up. So we kept picking up those blasted tapes!

By the end of the 1900’s – just listen to that – the end of the 1900’s – anyway, technology was booming and the internet was becoming a truly invasive technology.

Now here we are almost at 2010. Physicians still like their digital dictation machines but we can obtain the files on line. We are able to utilize technology to access transcriptionists and accounts all across the country and all across the world! We can interface with EMRs (electronic medical records) now, offer 2 and 4 hour turnaround time and offer totally web-based technology for our clients! How times change! It's exciting - Speech recognition is clearly on the horizon - I can't wait to see what's next!