A colleague and I are transcribing digital voice files. I am using a
Mac and she is using Windows. (She has recently moved to the west
coast and we can no longer physically divide the work: microcassettes
that are picked up at a nearby hospital.) I have been digitizing the
recordings from microcassette (each file is about 40 minutes in
length), converting them to MP3's (using iTunes) and posting them on
my iDisk for her to download and transcribe.  I need to get the
doctors that I work for to convert to a digital  system to make
everything more efficient. I need to make recommendations as to which
recorders they can buy. Searching for this information has made me
dizzy, hence this posting.

There are many medical transcription solutions available for Windows,
but that will not suit me since I am not about to switch platforms.
However, the hospital is using Windows as is my colleague.

I need to playback the digital recordings in Quicktime. (The foot
pedal that I have--the "vpedal" is excellent. It is responsive and
support variable speed control with Quicktime. I've tried other foot
pedals and they are not responsive enough.

I have used the Olympus ds 330 with good results. But I can't impose
that on the hospital. They need a list of recorders.

What I am asking for is:

1. A list of digital recorders that can record in a compressed format
that can easily be sent over the internet and that can play, either
natively in quicktime, or after a relatively effortless conversion.
Quicktime can play MP3's. Philips and Olympus use DSS compression
(digital speeech standard) and I can convert those files rather easily
from the DSS player. I don't know about recordings in WMA, or sony's
LPEC codec. Some recorders don't list how they compress their audio.

2.Step by step instructions on how to convert the files (if necessary)
so that I can play them in Quicktime.

---

Clarification of Question by xiquet-ga on 20 May 2004 16:50 PDT

Thanks, Mike of Bavaria and Cryptica, for your comments. I know that I
can't dictate what the hospital can use. Actually, it's not an entire
hospital, just two clinics in the hospital. I've been transcribing
their work for years. But the clinics have grown and the workload has
increased. Dictaating into microcassettes, having me print and return
hardcopy, etc. seems inefficient to me. I've been asked to make a
presentation. I want to be armed with information. I know that the dss
software works well. Currently, two doctors in private practice send
me their files recorded on the Olympus 330 and after converting them
to aiff files, they play beautifully. I assume that anything recorded
as an mp3 will play flawlessly in Quicktime (at least the mp3's in my
itunes library do). But what about WMA files? And what about Sony's
LPEC. Are there other formats that I should be aware of?

I have gone to transcription boards but they all seem to use windows.
Switching platforms is not an option for me. I use an iBook for the
audio playback as I transcribe on my iMac. In a separate room a
venerable g4 deskktop (350 MHz) is busy digitizing the microcassettes,
and subsequently converting them to mp3's to send to my associate to
be transcribed.

This is the beginning of what I believe will be an exciting and
profitable venture. There are doctors with expanding practices that
would like us to do their transcription. I believe the time-saving
will allow us to accommodate them. (No more travel to and from the
clinics, no more printing of 500 pages and another hundred envelopes
per week - that also will be digitally transmitted to them for their
secretaries to print.) But the transition is awful. The time I spend
digitizing, converting, scanning documents for my associate has made
me much less productive than I was when I was just using the old
analog digital transcriber.

I know I've gotten off the track here. I plan to ask subsequent
questions about digital file conversion, and about applesctips to help
automate my workflow, billing, etc. But the first piece of the puzzle
is getting the clinics on board, and to do that I need to be armed
with the info I've asked for in this way-too-long question.

Thanks for reading and I appreciate any input.

Xiquet:

The problem you will have is that you can not dictate to hospitals /
clinicians what recorder they should use, but you won't be able to
tell them what sound format to use, either. That's mainly because of
the requirements they may have by other transcription vendors. If you
can, tell them to use MP3 which more and more digital recorders are
offering. If you're stuck with DSS, Olympus has some conversion
software for OS9 and OSX that is available for free here (look at the
bottom of the page):
http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/cpg_product.asp?p=25&bc=11&product=859&fl=7

Another (I believe free) utility can be found at:
http://www.dictation.co.nz/downloads/main.html
This software converts DSS to AIFF which can be played with the
Quicktime player. It supports Olympus, and may work with other DSS
formats from Phillips, Sony and Sanyo.

In my many years of experience, the Olympus products work best in a
medical transcription environment.

I hope this helps answer some of your questions.

This may be overkill for you, but my journalist and broadcast friends
convinced me to buy the Marantz PMD 670. They swear by it.  It hasn't
arrived yet, though, so I can't swear by it personally, but here's the
blurb & website.

"The PMD670 Solid State Recorder features non-stop record with 7 hours
of battery life, a menu-driven remote operation, and an EDL marking
system for creating new files on-the-fly during the recording for easy
file selection during playback.
Record Directly to Compact Flash Cards
Easy One Touch Record
Portable Operation
No Moving Parts
MP3, MP2, WAV, BWF Format Compatible
Over 40 Assignable Quality Settings 

Here's the website:
http://www.d-mpro.com/users/folder.asp?FolderID=1582&CatID=19&SubCatID=180

Their tech support line is at 866.405.2154 and they are the friendliest,
nicest people.  I was asking about transcription software and they gave me
the name of a medical transcriber's society -- which I can't find at the 
moment.  But you might find a group like that a good source of info--
they probably have online forums where they discuss the issues you're
concerned with.

The Marantz tech guys also suggested a dictation/transcription website called
StartStop.com  
http://www.startstop.com/home.asp

Unfortunately, the PMD 670 is very expensive.  About $698. . .but I
found it for $100 less at
http://mineroff.com/   

Marantz has much cheaper models, too.  

If I find that medical transcriber society or whatever it was called,
I'll post it.

Xiquet --

I found my notes with the website that Tech Support at Marantz recommended:

MT DAILY - - MEDICAL TRANSCRIPTION NETWORKING CENTER:
 
"The medical transcription profession's busiest online community,
dedicated to serving the medical transcription profession. We are a
community of thousands of online MTs and students. We produce text for
physicians. We are sharing information and researching, helping each
other, and having fun. Hope you find what you came for, and stay to
give."

I looked at it and it sure looks like a great resource.
Here's the link:  

http://mtdaily.com/

Xiquet:

Being a big Mac fan myself, I unfortyunatley find myself giving you
the following advice: switch to windows for your transcription
business.

You stated in your clarification that you see yourself buidlinga
career with transcription and if you would like to do it professionaly
you will have to consider Windows -- especially for the job capturing
and tracking, as well as document distribution. Let's look at the
typical work-flow for a MT organization such as yours:

1. Dication Capturing 
You can offer your clients dictation by telephone and digital
hand-helds. A windows server at your location can capture either
dictation -- the first with a PC telecomm card, the second via FTP
software that comes with the handhelds and sends the files to your
server (usually via encrypted FTP for HIPAA security).

2. Job Routing
Once the voice files sit on your server, routing software will send
the voice files to you, your friend or anyone else you have that does
the transcription. You can set it up manually, or have the software do
it automatically according to parameters you set up. Your MTs will
require a internet connection, preferrably high-speed.

3. Transcription
This can be done on either a PC or Mac. Once again the PC has better
transcription tools, but you could use your Mac as described in
previous comments. Once completed the .doc (its usually a MS Word file
that is the final product) is routed back to your server. The file
will have the same name as the job ID assigned by your job router.
This way it is easy for you to track each job. Furthermore, clinicians
may provide you with ADT information (such as patient name, ID,
encounter time and visit, etc) that they want entered into the adt
file that accompanies the voice file. In other words, you end up with
2 files that look something like:
24567819.doc
24567819.adt
The number being the job ID. The ADT file become important duing
delivery of the reports back to the customer:

4. Report Delivery
The job router on your server will return the files back to the
customer. If they do not have some sort of HIS system, the ADT
information is useless to them because it is data that canonly bes
used by an HIS system. In this case, all your customer will do is
print the reports they receive from you (via your FTP or e-mail
distribution). But the job routing software automates this process and
can be a big time saver.
If the customer does have some sort of HIS, they will insist on the
ADT file because it is the only way for them to correctly import the
received reports into their HIS system. The ADT file will tell the HIS
the patient name and associated info and automnatically enter that
into the database of the HIS. Its the only way for your customer to
know which reprots belongs to what.

There is nothing like that availabloe for the Mac. And lots of good
products available for windows.

There are variables of the work-flow above, but it is typical for the
way in which transcription is moving.

I think once you decide what your work flow will be, then you should
decide what the best tools are to accomplish this. The file format of
your customer's dictation equipment should become secondary. Only an
efficient work-flow will allow you to turn-around the work efficiently
and make you money.

If you would like some links to potential vendors, let me know.

Hi, Xiquet --
I'm a Mac user, too.  A friend just sent me this -- thought I'd pass
it along in case it could be helpful:

Software that works with Mac called "iListen"

http://www.macspeech.com/products/iListen.html

The description indicates it will transcribe "your voice," so I'm not 
sure if it will work with an interview that includes a different 
voice (the program may have to "learn" the voice of whomever it is 
transcribing);l but I figured it was worth passing along the info.

One really good solution that I use is the Palm Tungsten T3 voice
recording feature. I would have the docturs use this as well (they may
already have palms because a lot of patient records are being
maintained on these systems). The neat part is that the T3 has a port
for Secure Digital Input/Output cards and a built in Voice Memo
package (in preferences you can setup the digital recordings to be
placed on the SDIO card directly) -- no work for the doctors!

SDIO cards have USB readers that work on Macs and PCs so you can have
the cards swapped out as the doctors use them up... Note the Digital
recordings are date/time stamped.

How much can you record?? TONS!! -- SDIO cards come in sizes up to 1GB
as of June, 2004 -- headed towards 2GB...I use mine for my Cantonese
language studies.

Hope this helps,

Tommie