Medical transcription firm keen on sharing software

Cebuano-owned medical transcription company Northern Transcription Works is planning to roll out its award-winning software to help other companies push their productivity and efficiency.

Northern Transcription Works (NTW) has developed a software solely designed for medical transcription operations called En Play, which gained national recognition during the recently concluded e-Services Philippines 2007 Global Sourcing Conference and Exhibition held in Manila.

NTW chief marketing officer (CMO), Ma. Lourdes Go, said the company will share this technology to other medical transcription firms, as soon as the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) works, such as patent, will be completed.

"We are still plowing it in, but we are willing to share the software to improve the medical transcription industry in the Philippines," Go said in a press conference.

NTW’s En Play is an advanced audio player, developed by its Research and Development (R&D) division to address audio problems through its ability to remove certain components of sound that hampers the clarity of dictation which make listening hard and at the same time enable a medical transcriptionist to fully manipulate the audio file that is being transcribed.

Because of this internally-developed software, NTW is now able to transcribe an average of 700 lines a day, which is higher from 300 average lines a day hit by the medical transcription industry in the Philippines.

According to Go, the company is allocating about 15 percent of its gross income for its R&D, in order to push higher productivity in the medical transcription works made in the Philippines.

"We want to have cutting edge technology," Go adding said adding that the Philippines has a good potential to capture the growing multi-million dollar medical transcription market in the United States, if companies have good technological backbone.

"Technology is very important to this business," said NTW chief information officer, and head of the R&D department Richard Tiong.

Other in-house-made software not adopted by the company, include job distribution software, dicta-capture software, among others. The company also won in the "Best Website" category during the same awarding event.

Serving about 40 clinics and 900 doctors since the company started in 2003, Go said NTW is expanding its production capability from now 18 MTs (medical transcriptionists) to 100 MTs by the third quarter of this year.

NTW has a total of 110 seats at their facility, located along Osmeña Boulevard. Its training arm firm, the International School for Medical Transcription (ISMT) is also producing hundreds of skilled MTs in Cebu.

NTW’s innovative software bested other entries of medical transcription companies in the Philippines, which are members of the Medical Transcription Industry Association of the Philippines Inc. (MTIAPI), in an awarding ceremony organized by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (Citem), Board of investments (BOI), and Foreign Trade Corps (FTSC).

Out of US$20 billion to US$25 billion market for MT in the United States, Philippines has only utilized about .9 percent of the total potential, although MT is considered as one of the top 4 Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) priorities of the government

Medical Transcription (MT) outsourcing service is the process of converting voice dictation (typically either cassette or digital forms) into a permanent written record utilizing word processing equipment and software.

This service developed after the United States government amended the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) under the administration of US President former Bill Clinton in 1996.

This law ensures the continuity of healthcare coverage for individuals changing jobs and includes a provision that impacts on the management of health information, seeks to simplify the administration of health care insurance, and also aims to combat waste, fraud and abuse in health insurance and healthcare.