First Speech-Enabled Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) App for iPhone and iPad

Wouldn't it be great if you could speak your order into your mobile device? Well, the folks at Intermountain Healthcare will have that luxury soon . Here's a snippet from a press release that came out today:

Franklin, TN – February 22, 2013 – M*Modal, a leading provider of clinical documentation and Speech Understanding™ solutions, today announced an agreement with Intermountain Healthcare to jointly develop innovative mobile technology for speech-enabled Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE), enabling physicians and hospital staff to conversationally order patient medication and other medical functions using iOS® devices, including iPhone® and iPad® mobile digital devices. This mobile application (app) will benefit healthcare providers by allowing physicians to quickly, easily and securely place orders at the point of care.

M*Modal (booth #6647) and Intermountain (booth #1810) will be demonstrating the order entry app for medications at the 2013 HIMSS Conference, being held March 3-7 in New Orleans. Intermountain is an internationally recognized healthcare provider network of 22 hospitals, 185 clinics and an affiliated health insurance company, SelectHealth.

You can learn more about this here.

Do you miss the simplicity of the original Palm OS?

Did you have a Palm Treo running Palm OS? Maybe you had a PDA like the Palm V or a Sony Clie. Do you miss the simplicity of the original Palm OS?

As a I use different smartphones, I find myself often remembering how the original Palm OS was simple and elegant - perfect for low-tech physicians who tend to be late adopters of technology. I was mainly a Windows Mobile (Pocket PC) user because I didn't care about the simplicity of Palm OS. I needed a PDA that functioned like a PC. I was multitasking all the time.

As I test and use iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, and webOS, I find myself thinking back to those Palm OS days. Those old Palm OS devices were meant to be used with a stylus. Today's smartphones are being built around finger touch input/navigation. The simplicity is returning because we need large icons that we can tap with our fingers. There was no multitouch concept when we were using a passive stylus on our small digital screens. Now, our finger tips act as capacitors, allowing us to input text, navigate on a web page, and control the device through creative two-finger gestures.

What will future smartphones be like? They will incorporate touch-screens, but they will also heavily rely on voice recognition and voice commands. I wonder how long we'll need to wait before that type of voice input becomes the "standard."

Speak your email and your smartphone will compose it for you

Does your smartphone do this? Speak your email message and the smartphone will convert your speech to text and compose it for you.

As voice recognition capabilities improve on these mobile devices, we'll soon be speaking all of our commands and messages right into our phones. Who needs a keyboard, right? The days of those QWERTY keyboards are nearing an end as speech recognition improves.

This video shows how the new Motorola Droid X running Android will convert your speech to email:

Google Search now supports voice input

It's about time, isn't it? Google Search now supports voice input. Speak your queries in English, Mandarin, or Japanese.  I wonder why they picked those 3 languages. What about Spanish?

Which smartphones support Google Search by Voice? Here's the list:

• Android (of course!)    
• BlackBerry      
• iPhone      
• Nokia S60 (Symbian)    
• Windows Mobile

If you're still using the antiquated Windows Mobile, you may want to try Bing which also includes voice search. The voice recognition engine isn't very robust, but who's complaining since this is a free app? I wonder how Google's voice recognition compares with Bing's.

You can get Google Mobile apps by typing:  m.google.com/search into your mobile web browser.  You can also learn more about Google Mobile apps by visiting: http://www.google.com/mobile/google-mobile-app/

The future of smartphones: voice command

My prediction is that within 5 years, most of us will be using our voices to navigate our smartphones. We won't be relying on touch-screens or multi-touch gestures. We won't be typing on buttons from slide-out QWERTY keyboards. Everything will depend on voice command. Of course, the only exception may be when you require some privacy. Then, you may need to pull out that archaic method of entering data.

Current smartphones have some sophisticated voice command capabilities, but we're still in very early stages with voice recognition and voice command as this relates to smartphones. The majority of us still type our e-mails or use the buttons or touch-screen to open apps, navigate, and browse the web. Imagine what your life would be like if you could simply speak and all these things would happen.

For instance, what if you could just say: "look up drug... drug name Avastin... go to adult dosing... " and then within a few seconds you're looking at the dosing schedule for Avastin.