Emdat is pleased to announce the release of Emdat Mobile for Android. The Emdat Mobile application is already very popular on the iPhone, and we are excited to be able to deliver the same easy-to-use application for Android powered devices. The Android app allows physicians to view their patient schedule, dictate, review, and approve transcription. In addition, we’ve introduced a few new features to this version. Android users will be able to see their schedules in different views, review transcription in any part of the workflow, and dictate with Insert, Overwrite and Append options. Emdat is dedicated to the continued development of our Mobile applications — we look forward to bringing these features and more to both platforms in the near future.

You can download and install Emdat Mobile for Android from the Android Market.

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Medical Health Imaging and Healthcare IT News recently published stories on Emdat Mobile for iPhone, iPad and Windows Mobile. Highlighting updates to the software, the publications detail improvements in usability and security.

PracticeLink.com recently spoke to several physicians employing Emdat's integration with EMRs for the article Transcription gone high tech. Because Emdat allows them to continue to dictate while still enjoying the benefits of EMRs, they're saving time and providing better patient care.

Like many healthcare organizations in recent years, Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation and Loyola University Health System have adopted electronic medical records (EMRs) as a way to streamline their documentation process. However, converting to EMRs without disrupting physician workflow presented a unique challenge, given that many doctors prefer dictating patient notes orally as opposed to entering information manually into a computer. For both health systems, the solution came in the form of EMR integration from Emdat Inc. Read all about it.

On Tuesday, March 8th, Emdat will be releasing the first in a series of updates to our InQuiry and InCommand web applications. With Tuesday's release, the following changes will be in affect:

A recent HISTALK blog post included the following reader-submitted article about the value of transcription in modern healthcare documentation.

On Tuesday, September 7, 2010, Emdat will be making InScribe 4.97 available for download. On Monday, September 20, 2010, our web applications will be deployed to our servers, upgrading them to InQuiry and InCommand 5.8. Below are details on what is new in each application. Please note that some of the features in the InScribe release on the 4th will only be available after the associated InCommand updates are deployed on the 20th.

Comment Tagging Through InCommand, MTSOs will be able to create Comment Tags – canned notations about a transcription. Via InScribe, an MT will be able to choose one or more Comment Tags to apply to a transcription. Comment Tags can be indicators such as "Missing Patient Information" or "Could not Understand Dictator." A color can be associated with each Comment Tag. Through InQuiry's Review folder, a medical facility will see the Comment folder icon in the color of the chosen tag, and will be able to filter transcriptions by a given tag. This functionality will be extended...

Emdat Mobile for iPhone is reviewed in a post today on iMedicalApps.

Blogger Felasfa Wodajo, MD notes that he's been an Emdat user for 3 years, and finds that the app is "a very nice advance over using a digital dictaphone and special software to upload dictations."

In case his readers (his primary audience is doctors) don't know about Emdat, Dr Wodajo provides details about Emdat's medical dictation and transcription suite of software applications, mentioning, specifically, the potential impact of functionality like DaRT on the healthcare industry. He also cites our recently released white paper, "Facilitate EMR Success."

iMedicalApps is a online medical publication written by...

ADVANCE, provider of multiple healthcare-related publications, Web sites, and services, brought together some of the leading professionals and representatives of top companies in the field to discuss the future of transcription and how it will affect MTs—both now and down the road. Emdat CEO Randy Olver gathered with Tracy Boesch, TransTech Medical Solutions, Jay Cannon, Webmedx, Michael Clark, MedQuist, Peter Durlach, Nuance Communications, Inc, Dianna Hall, CMT, AHDI-F, Covenant Healthcare, Barb Marques, CMT, AHDI-F, to discuss the challenges MTs face in the changing health care environment, the impact changes will have on recruiting new MTs into the field, and whether the perceived reputation of the profession is well-deserved. Read the article here:  All Hands on Deck: ADVANCE Roundtable Discussion of the MT Profession

Emdat has developed technology which easily adapts dictation into transcribed digital records. The purpose of this is to have technology serve man not man serve technology. The ability to populate these digital transcriptions back into the EMR makes for a winning combination of improving patient care as well as better data capture. The following article alludes to the fact that EMR implementations can be problematic if approached incorrectly and supports keeping the physcian out of the clerical business.

Physicians are pushing the federal Health & Human Services Department to include physician narratives in the proposed regulations for electronic health records. Doctors use the narrative to expand on an assessment and offer subjective and objective evaluations of a case, as well as outline the treatment plan. Some doctors use speech recognition technology for their narratives in EHR systems. The public has 60 days to comment on the HHS regulations.

"No matter how good [EHR records] are, you'll never get the flavored nuance of the patient's [situation] if you don't have an unstructured note," said Dr. Steven Schiff, the medical director and service chief of cardiology at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center, in Fountain Valley, Calif., in an eWEEK interview.

RANDY OLVER NAMED EMDAT CEO, WILL LEAD NEXT PHASE OF GROWTH FOR MEDICAL TRANSCRIPTION SOLUTIONS PROVIDER

Fitchburg, WI (Nov. 5, 2009) – Emdat, a world leader in online-based medical transcription solutions, has tapped Randy Olver as its new CEO, effective immediately.

Emdat’s founding partners, who remain actively involved in the business, selected Olver to serve as CEO of the 10-year-old company. Steve Palmisano, one of the founders who had been CEO, will serve as president.

“Randy’s diverse business experience is exactly what we’ve been seeking to guide Emdat to the next level so that we can continue providing world-class transcription products and services to our clients,” Palmisano said. “We’ve tripled in size in the past five years and, looking forward, our business needs have grown dramatically.”

Emdat, which experienced double-digit growth during the difficult business environment of the past year, remains committed to its core business model of providing medical transcription...

Although it should be pretty straightforward to estimate your costs for transcription I have found that it has been very difficult to do a direct comparison without validating numbers. To make a complex comparison simple I will only look at billing by the line and not compare that to other methods of billing (page, word etc.). Generally speaking there are three ways to bill by the line:

The  standard which is 65 characters per line which will include spaces and punctuation. Basic (Gross) Method which counts each carriage return as a line. Microsoft Word which uses an embedded line word counter similar to the basic method. The differences in costs of these three measures can be as different as an apple to an orange.

Let me give you an example....

Emdat, Incorporated 857 Collins Blvd. Covington, Louisiana 70533

AAMT standard calculates this address as 1 line Basic (Gross) calculates this address as 3 lines Word calculates this address as 3...

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple computer, once said, "You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."  Nothing has made that more visibly true to Emdat then when we implemented our Feedback system.  Emdat *is* asking our customers what they want, and for the most part are trying to deliver.  That can be a long road, and more ideas will come in while on that road, but we believe it is a road worth traveling.

Emdat is a constantly evolving system.  We originally built the system around the ideas of the three founders, who brought in their experience working at various medical institutions.  But their experiences were one-sided - coming mostly from a technical background.  Steve Palmisano, one of the founders, recognized this early on, and has always kept the User Experience in the foreground of our application development.  Almost no piece of any application goes out the door without Steve (and more recently, Rich and his...

Some systems give transcription companies the option of charging for these lines.  Since Transcription Companies pay for the software that generates these lines, they have every right to charge their client for them.  Traditionally, anything on the final report is considered chargeable lines.  In the Emdat system, the transcription company or medical facility (whomever is contracted to use the software) not only have the choice of charging for headers and footers, but also patient demographic labels, clinician titles and credentials, first and last paragraphs of a transcription (if as a template).

The Print Template was first designed by Emdat and uses the technology built into Internet Explorer to allow for variable information before the transcription body and after the transcription body.  Because these variables are populated through setup screens and the transcriptionist doesn't type them, Transcription Companies can use Emdat without any additional expenses and usually save money by using Emdat. 

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For the past 50 years, transcription has been the most efficient means of documenting a patient encounter.  During this time frame, the transcription industry has grown to be a multi-billion dollar industry annually.  Doctors love the convenience of dictating the encounter and the time savings they realize. Administrators frown each time they receive a transcription bill and are constantly trying to find a solution that will dramatically decrease or eliminate their transcription cost.

One popular solution to eliminate or reduce transcription costs is to implement an EMR type of system. The system allows clinicians or their staff to document the patient encounter on-line, thereby eliminating or drastically reducing the need for transcription. In a recent article titled “Transcription’s Coopetition with EMR’s”  by Bob Haugen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Emdat, Inc., he explains the problems associated with such an approach. These problems result in loss of revenue for the health care facility.

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EMRs have been around for some 20 plus years and in that time frame, have slowly been adopted by more and more medical facilities.  Many go into the implementation phase of an EMR based upon the  information received from their EMR vendor during the sales process.  Eliminating transcription is the number one cost justification for purchasing an EMR.  EMR vendors know this is a thorn in the side of medical facilities and any system that can reduce or eliminate transcription would be widely received.  The theory is a sound one.  Take a clinician who dictates and utilizes a transcription service and eliminate that monthly transcription expense by having the doctor use a template on-line within the EMR.  Immediately, the savings are realized in the elimination of transcription expenses.  Administrators rejoice because this was one of the major reasons they elected to implement an EMR.

Within one to two weeks after implementing the EMR and its template features, clinicians are upset because they have increased...