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Need some help from old timers - Michelle

Posted: Apr 24, 2011

Need some of you “old timers” to help settle a difference of opinion. We can’t seem to find any accurate information using the web.

I was having a discussion with another MT friend about timelines in regards to when SR/VR started and when they started off-shoring.

I say everything happened within the last 5 years. My friend thinks she started using SR over 5 years ago at the MTSO she works for.

Anyone have any accurate info?

1. Year Speech Recognition started to be used by MTSOs?

2. Year off-shoring to India started?

By the way, the only reference I could find for SR/VR was for Dragon Medical:

2003 ScanSoft Ships Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 Medical, Lowers Healthcare Costs through Highly Accurate Speech Recognition.

Not sure about SR/VR, but.... - Hi there!

[ In Reply To ..]
...I think offshoring's more in the 6-10 year range. It's definitely been longer than 6 years, although it seems like we've been dealing with this for a lot longer.

You lose :) - old time MT

[ In Reply To ..]
I worked for a company in Georgia in 2000. At that time, companies were already using offshore labor. In fact, my job was to screen and contract with offshore companies.

Companies have also been using a back-end type of speech recognition for probably 13-14 years at this point. Of course, it was crap, but that's beside the point. It was still being used.

I supervised for a company that off-shored to . . . - Anon

[ In Reply To ..]
the Philippines around 1996/1997ish. Cannot comment on SR/VR.

Offshoring/VR - Anonymous

[ In Reply To ..]
I'm only guessing but offshoring has probably been going on for at least 10 years. VR has been around for years as well, I remember some doctors attempting to use it back in the 80s.

In the mid-1980s - L&L

[ In Reply To ..]
MTSOs were recruiting MTs to contract to work a year in India supervising Indian MTs. That is how it all started. I got a notice every May for many years. I forget the company name now. They also used to recruit MTs to work in Saudi Arabia and Dubai. The big draw was not paying US taxes for a year.

mt x 37 yr - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
Yes, it was in the early 80s, I worked for a hospital that had unbelievable backlog, because all this work had to be redone after having been offshored. Just a few years later (still 80s) worked for an MD on the side that was had to always have the newest technology. He had us using speech recognition. He had a horrible East Indian accent and needless to stay, the machine couldn't grasp his voice right. (I was unfamiliar with MTSOs at that time and their practices.) In that same time frame, a few of us MTs were also toying with the idea of going overseas to India for better money/no taxes, but none of us went.

I know a couple of MTs who went - still remember some of the stories

[ In Reply To ..]
I even considered it because the money was good but the bug stories changed my mind! LOL!

Living in a "compound" in Saudi Arabia would stop - me! Too similar to "slavery". nm

[ In Reply To ..]

Bad memory here, but I started at my current - MTSO a little less than 4 years ago and

[ In Reply To ..]
had my first editing account maybe 1-1/2 years before that at another very large MTSO. It was one of their first edited hospital accounts (on EditScript/eScription) but not the very first. So at least at that point VR was really here and starting to take off.

Back in 1990 we were told in a meeting SR had made MT 100% obsolete - See message

[ In Reply To ..]
I was really upset at a meeting when the speaker told us that by the end of the year medical transcriptionists would be 100% obsolete and replaced by speech recognition. I must have been visibly upset, because I remember someone next to me telling me to calm down because they had been saying the same thing for years. This was in 1990 when I was an officer of the organization that was hosting the speaker on that day. That day is ingrained upon my mind.

We had a similar meeting back in the late 90s. - My initial reaction was - s/m

[ In Reply To ..]
"I'll believe it when I see it."

So here we are, some 15-plus years later, and evemuch of my work load is VR editing. Still, judging by the total cr@p I have to edit every single day, with VR that, contrary to popular belief/wishful thinking, does NOT "learn", and my reaction is still the same. "I'll believe MTs/editors will be obsolete when I see it!"

SR/VR startup - Roses

[ In Reply To ..]
I remember seeing a demo of this in the late 1980s early 1990s. It was in use in radiology, but the technology was not as good as it is today. Obviously, it is much better now and is really starting to take off. The demo I saw was put on by Dictaphone.

Off-shoring - runningon MT

[ In Reply To ..]
I was editing work from India in approximately 2000, not sure how soon before that it actually started.

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