2024 - Top 3 tech trends that will transform the Transcription Industry
Transcriptionists, also referred to as scribes, have been around for centuries. They were tasked with documenting history and laws as early as 3400 BCE. Over time, as society evolved and different tools of the trade because available, the profession of transcription has transitioned in the way it provides services, most significantly in the past few decades.
Paper to the Typewriter - transitioned from handwritten texts to printing the text on paper
Typewriter to the DOS Word Processor - moved the process of typing from a mechanical device to an electronic one
Microsoft Word on a Graphics User Interface - introduced the concept of rich text formatting
Transcription involves converting the spoken word into text. While scribes transitioned to steno and court reporting where they are present during the actual event that is being transcribed, as recording equipment became available, a new profession emerged where a live transcript was not necessary, and electronic transcriptionists would transcribe offline from a recording of the event, where the process of recording evolved with the evolution of audio technology.
Audio cassette tapes
Dictaphones/ standalone digital recorders/ computer recording devices
While the transcription industry has been going through its shifts, the tech world has been hard at work over the past few decades on different AI tools. Most of these tools were relegated to labs or Fortune 500 companies, due to their complexity, cost, and the need for very powerful computers to power their abilities. 2023 was the year when quite a few of these tools became generally available, as affordable server computing power made it possible to offer these tools in the Software as a Service (SaaS) model using cloud servers. They became accessible to solopreneurs and small businesses to use as assistive devices in daily business operations, paving the way for growth in professional service companies that choose to adopt these tools in their workflows. Three such technologies are expected to have a significant impact on the delivery of transcription services in 2024:
Document Automation
If a transcription company uses MS Word for producing its transcripts, and doesn’t use its templates feature, this is the first step towards tech adoption and automation in your transcription workflows. MS Word has a rich suite of features, including styles and macros, that are ideal for transcriptionists. They save a significant amount of time with document setup and ensure consistency across transcripts.
Advanced forms of document automation include the ability for a system to automatically produce a pre-filled template to give the transcriptionist a head start with transcript production, saving significant amounts of time and reducing training time required to ramp up the team to get comfortable with setting up templates for each client.
Speech-to-Text
Having been around since the ‘50s, speech-to-text (aka speech recognition aka automatic speech recognition) has been gaining momentum over the past 10 years, and made it into the mainstream in 2023. If there is one technology that you need to familiarize yourself with as a transcription company, it’s this. When you read media articles claiming that transcription as a profession will be eradicated by AI, they are referring to speech-to-text systems.
Speech-to-text systems have been used without any editing in low fidelity environments for a few years now, in live captioning, and call center data analytics. They have made significant strides in their accuracy along the way, with some achieving 80% to 85% accuracy in clear recording environments and for specific industries/ vocabularies. However, anywhere that accuracy and formatting of the transcript is critical, including medical, legal and insurance service delivery, transcriptionists will continue to play a pivotal role in ensuring the final transcript meets the highest levels of quality expected.
The true magic happens when first draft transcripts generated by speech-to-text are edited by subject matter transcriptionists to reduce transcript production time and improve the transcription experience.
Document Extraction
Some enterprise transcription processes have some level of document setup involved:
Legal transcription - Style of Cause for the cover page, header and footer
Medico-Legal transcription - Claimant and IME information, as well as instructions for questions to be answered in the report
This setup can take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the amount of information and how well it is organized in the source documents. AI systems have progressed to a point where they can be trained to extract relevant data points if they are trained by skilled staff. Source documents can be ingested to extract relevant data for the purposes of downstream setup of reports, letters and hearing transcripts. This reduces human error related to data entry while saving time in transcript production.
As 2023 draws to a close, it is imperative that transcription leaders learn how to leverage these tools for an improved transcription experience for staff, better service for clients, and improved ROI for the company.