Mar 3, 20223 min read

Voice and Speech Recognition: What is the Difference and Why It Matters

Somewhere in the world someone is using some form of voice technology right now. Whether they are using voice or speech recognition technology, they use it to get information, navigate their vehicle, translate their voice into text, they may even use it to give voice assistants specific actionable commands (“hello Siri”).

We have seen such a jump in the growth of these types of technologies, and many end-users blend the terminology to describe the same thing, but they are separate and will provide a different outcome. To put it into an easy to explain frame of reference, the difference between speech and voice recognition is basically this:

➢ Voice recognition understands a specific user’s voice

➢ Speech recognition can translate anyone’s voice

We are seeing tremendous growth in companies and individuals using voice and speech recognition devices, so knowing the difference helps you to determine how best to utilize each technology.

Voice recognition has a goal to recognize the person speaking the words, rather than the actual words themselves. Therefore, voice recognition software disregards the language and is more focused on identifying the person speaking rather than the words spoken. This technology is widely used by security programs to identify a specific users voice.

Speech recognition programs aim to arrive at the words that are being spoken. Therefore, speech recognition programs clear through accents and inflections of the voice to detect the words being said. Speech recognition also involves the recording of the spoken words and the ability to recognize, understand, and translate human speech into text. This is completed while using some type of recording device (a microphone, handheld device, smartphone app or digital voice recorder). The audio is then converted into a set of words digitally within the device or directly into an open software program (document, EHR, etc).

Nuance® Dragon® Medical One is the product that has taken years of deep research, machine learning, and the implementation of (AI) artificial intelligence to develop today’s speech recognition technologies to recognize, understand, and translate words spoken by healthcare professionals into text. Physicians can use the solution in a variety of workflow applications as it leverages cloud technology to store data, safely and securely and make it available for use when required.

The highly accurate speech recognition solution is able to achieve success as accents, inflections, and even different languages are learned by the solution, increasing the accuracy rate each time it is used.

It is simple to set up, easy to use, and keeps your office productive with:

➔ Single Voice Profile Setup - gets you up and running quickly, and documenting patient records directly in your EHR

➔ Accurate, and Portable Clinical Documentation - via the speech recognition solution to recognize your words and translate into text, across a wide range of Windows® devices

Understanding the difference between voice and speech recognition does matter, and now you can see for yourself how the intuitive speech recognition technologies can help your medical staff in their documentation requirements.