Best Medical Dictation Apps for iPhone and Android 2024
Medical dictation apps offer a more mobile, flexible documentation workflow. Dictation is part of a clinician’s daily routine – and as technology progresses, there are more ways to save time while dictating. Speech recognition has made documentation much more efficient for healthcare professionals – allowing some to avoid medical transcription altogether and instead dictate directly into their EHR or other health software. The most feature-rich medical speech recognition platforms exist on PCs. However, a desktop computer isn’t the only way to get accurate medical speech recognition, and it’s not always the most practical. There are now medical dictation apps for iPhone and Android that immediately recognize speech or send audio files to a speech recognition platform in a secure, HIPAA-compliant manner.
What is medical dictation?
Medical dictation means vocally notating important aspects of a patient’s visit or a clinical trial into a voice recording device. These notes are often either transcribed automatically with speech recognition or manually with a transcription team. Both methods have a high degree of accuracy, but speech recognition can reduce the time it takes to enter and review information.
Why medical dictation needs to go mobile
Mobile dictation allows for more flexibility and makes it easy to dictate without advanced equipment. If you are away from your workstation, you can still take notes and send them to your workstation or even into the EHR directly from your phone.
Using your smartphone as a microphone can also help you work in different environments or get started on speech recognition with a lower starting investment.
More flexibility, and working from wherever you are, helps move the documentation process along more quickly.
What are the best medical dictation apps for mobile phones?
So then, what is the best dictation software for Android and iOS? There are a few options available now, each serving slightly different needs. Some of the available options are speech to text apps, while others are purely used for recording and storing dictations for back-end transcription or other uses.
Fusion Narrate Smartphone App – Fusion Narrate Keyboard
Our own mobile speech recognition solution, Fusion Narrate Keyboard, is a mobile dictation app that comes with the Fusion Narrate license. Fusion Narrate Keyboard enables clinicians to dictate directly into healthcare apps, including mobile EHR apps, from an iPhone and iPad. With our app, users can also work securely on their iOS device with HIPAA-compatible features, including secure data transmissions with encryption over WiFi or cell networks.
The app leverages the Fusion Narrate cloud-based speech recognition platform in real-time to ensure accurate transcriptions. You can also use the substitutions that you have saved to your Fusion Narrate speech profile with the app. Fusion Narrate Keyboard is available from the App Store.
Philips Dictation Smartphone App – LFH7400
The Philips app, LFH7400, is free and built for medical use. After making a dictation, the audio file can be encrypted, then stored in the app. You can view a list of all dictations and filter by patient name or by the HCP who made the dictation. This filtering, along with other file properties and recording prioritization allows for workflow management from within the app.
LFH7400 does not recognize speech, but any dictation made can be sent directly to a speech recognition service or transcription service directly from the app.
Olympus Dictation Smartphone App Solutions – Olympus Dictation
The Olympus app is designed to record voice memos, then encrypt and transfer the voice recordings. These recordings can be emailed or sent directly into the user’s Olympus Dictation Management System. The app can be tested for free for 60 days, after which a full license is required.
The Olympus app is available for Android or iOS devices, but to get the app’s full functionality, you will need to activate a trial license. To learn more about how to use the Olympus Dictation app, click here.
nVoq Wireless Microphone app – Wireless Microphone
With the nVoq Wireless Microphone app, you can record audio directly into a desktop computer from your phone. This app is built to make iPhone dictation possible, with the same functionality that any dictation microphone would have. The nVoq Wireless Microphone includes a button that allows the user to execute voice shortcuts.
The nVoq Wireless Microphone app is intended for use with Fusion Narrate. Audio recorded by the Wireless Microphone is recognized through nVoq’s cloud speech server, then inserted in the text area or field selected on the user’s paired desktop. The Wireless Microphone app is available on Android and iOS.
What are the best free medical dictation apps?
As of now, there are no free dictation apps designed specifically for healthcare. Although there are plenty of free mobile speech recognition options available, they are not practical for use as medical dictation software.
Virtual assistants, like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, and the Google Assistant do allow for voice-to-text, but they are not designed for medical dictation. While medical speech recognition software might easily recognize ‘cervicodorsal’, for example, the mobile assistants would struggle to understand what you were saying. Attempting to use these programs for medical purposes will lead to errors and an inaccurate transcription.
There are also security concerns associated with these personal mobile assistants – including how some can record and store your dictations. Clearly, this can be in violation of HIPAA requirements. When PHI is stored by a 3rd party, its confidentiality and security can no longer be ensured.
While these virtual assistants can be of assistance when making quick notes, they do not serve as a full replacement for dictation software for medical professionals.
Once you’ve determined the solution that best fits your organization’s needs, you can begin documenting directly into mobile EHRs with your phone.
