As technology advances, many medical transcriptionists worry about whether or not this field will remain viable. Advances in speech recognition software has left many people wondering what impact this will have on the medical transcription field.

The way I see it is this: Let’s say that speech recognition technology does blow the conventional way of creating medical reports right out of the water. What happens to medical transcriptionists? I think this would greatly benefit our field because most people just see us as glorified typists, which is not the case at all. Medical transcriptionists would then move more into the editing mode and quality control aspect of medical report creation rather than just transcribing medical reports. It would also lead to increased production and higher pay because of the perceived value of editing rather than “just typing” the medical reports.

All professions go through such changes: some are minor improvements, and some are profound advances due to changes in technology as noted here. The medical field is constantly striving to find better ways to do things in shorter time frames without compromising the quality of the created product which, in this case, is a patient’s medical report(s).

The best course of action, in my opinion, is to remain aware of the changes in the medical field, talk to medical transcriptionists who are using cutting edge technology, and decide how you can implement the current cutting-edge tools in your medical transcription business.