Australian Radiologists rely on Crescendo Digital Dictation

Sydney, April 1, 2008 - Crescendo Systems Corp. and Australian distributor Lanier Voice just announced two new DigiScribe-XL installations in the Sydney metropolitan area.

South Coast X-ray, a private Radiology group that provides diagnostic imaging services to patients across six locations in Sydney and Wollongong, NSW, decided to equip their staff with DigiScribe-XL in 2007 after evaluating several digital dictation vendors. The new system replaces the group's old Lanier telephone dictation stations, which generated significant telephone bills every time a Radiologist dictated from one of the remote locations. With DigiDictate-IP, they can now dictate directly onto their PC, and the resulting voice files are transferred over to the transcription team in real-time, via the network.

Using DigiPlayer-IP, transcriptionists can start listening to a dictation even before the file has finished downloading, while typing the report in their familiar Microsoft® Word environment. Once a report has been transcribed, it is stored centrally for later physician approval and distribution.

"South Coast X-ray trusted not only the technology, but the quality of service that Lanier Voice is renowned for. The implementation was smooth, and user acceptance of the new technology was exceptional thanks to the extreme ease-of-use of DigiScribe-XL," explains Duncan Burnett, National Product and Technical Manager, Lanier Voice.

Also endorsing DigiScribe-XL is the Radiology Department of the Bankstown-Lidcombe hospital, a 454-bed metropolitan acute care facility and teaching hospital of the University of New South Wales. At Bankstown, the volume of dictations had been growing significantly over the past few years; a growth the department's old system could not cope with. Thanks to its virtually unlimited capacity, DigiScribe-XL can not only handle the current workload but also grow with the organization's future needs. The PC dictation interface, coupled with the real-time streaming of voice files, mean that completed voice files are made immediately accessible to the next available transcriptionist. "DigiScribe-XL has played a key role in the department's strategy to improve workflow. Thanks to its advanced features, DigiScribe-XL is able to automate complex dictation-transcription workflows, resulting in faster turnaround times," continues Duncan Burnett.

"Backlogs in Radiology reporting have a direct impact on the progress and quality of patient care. Some practices choose to treat the symptoms by hiring more transcriptionists to better cope with peaks of activity. Others, like Southcoast X-ray and Bankstown, choose to treat the cause by streamlining the entire dictation-to-transcription workflow with the help of DigiScribe-XL. This allows them to deliver highly reliable reports faster while achieving immediate cost savings," concludes Costa Mandilaras, President, Crescendo Systems Corp.