KB ID # 2 - InfraWare 360 platform Overview

Answer / Solution

InfraWare 360 Platform Overview

Summary

Congratulations and welcome to InfraWare! If you’re ready to explore the most up-to-date transcription platform in the industry, we will be with you every step of the way. Using our proven method, you’ll be amazed by how quickly you can get up and running with our state-of-the-art platform. The InfraWare 360 transcription platform is a modern suite of client/server software applications combined with online data services.

Purpose

This document introduces the major components of the platform, their various strengths and the overall process flow.

Overview

The purpose of the InfraWare 360 transcription platform is to reduce costs, improve convenience and accelerate turn-around time. The primary benefit to the transcription service organization is improved capacity.

By leveraging the time and effort of transcriptionists, InfraWare 360 enables each transcriptionist to produce more lines per unit of time. The same pool of workers can then represent a greater production capacity.

Geofiltering is in place at the data center to block traffic to/from Russia, N. Korea, and China.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

As a hosted application, InfraWare 360 will save you money while it increases your efficiency. The service is fully scalable and you only pay for what you use. Since there is no major capital investment, Return on Investment (ROI) is nearly immediate. The server, software, and hosting environment are maintained by InfraWare, so the customer is relieved of those responsibilities. This popular new approach to publishing software is known as Software as a Service (SaaS) or an Application Service Provider (ASP). In the transcription industry, some call a platform such as InfraWare 360 a TASP (Transcription ASP).

Capacity

Production capacity is at the heart of the InfraWare value proposition. An organization that could benefit from additional capacity by producing more lines or by reducing a backlog will appreciate the benefits.

Alternatively, MTSOs coping with aggressive price competition or a contracting market can improve their operating profit margins.

Managers usually have a good handle on a metric (such as lines per day) for the capacity of their organization at any given time. Knowing approximately how many lines personnel can process each day as well as the impact of vacations or other reductions in personnel hours is vital to the business metric.

The Health IT industry is an ever-changing environment. As the complexity and challenges of medical transcription continue to grow, InfraWare 360 can help meet the need.

Naturally, we have come to think of capacity as a function of the number of qualified workers we employ. Another possibility is to increase the volume of work that each employee can produce in a given period of time. It goes without saying that productivity varies from worker to worker, but what if we could increase the throughput of each worker by 50 percent, 100 percent, 200 percent or even 300 percent? That might sound unlikely, but the InfraWare implementation of automatic speech recognition (ASR) does make such improvements possible.

Of course, the ability to produce these results depends entirely upon the ability to correct documents much faster than they could be typed from scratch. That starts with reasonably accurate First Drafts. (A draft with 60 percent accuracy, for example, would probably require more time to correct than to simply be retyped). Once the recognition accuracy rate reaches a range in the 80- or 90-percent range, the benefits become achievable. The challenge then becomes a matter of providing the right productivity software tools to focus on effective correction.

InfraWare achieves this for the transcriptionist by utilizing back-end SRT to deliver a First Draft text document to them effortlessly. The InfraWare Transcription Client (ITC) is a powerful editing and correction tool that downloads these First Drafts and empowers the transcriptionist with easy-to-use tools for fast, accurate production.

Food for thought: Qualifications of workers is an interesting related subject. Today, the skills required to survive in the transcriptionist service field are fairly rigid. Language, typing speed, work ethic, self-motivation.

How many potential workers have the proofreading skills and the capacity to learn the dictation but will never become fast typists? These people are excluded from the transcriptionist ranks today, but they need not be in a future that relies heavily on accuracy in reading and correction and far less on raw typing speed.

Dictation

Fundamental to any dictation platform is the author’s desire to use it. A diverse community of physicians and other authors calls for flexible methods for capturing dictation. InfraWare 360 supports:

iPhone/iPad/Android - Dictate directly into an iPhone, iPad, or Android device using InfraWare Mobile available for free from Apple's App Store/Google Play Store.

Telephone – InfraWare provides a user-friendly telephone dictation system that allows authors to dictate from any land-line telephone via toll-free numbers. Custom keypad mapping can provide familiar user experiences.
PC – Dictation by a microphone connected directly to a personal computer (PC) is supported by the InfraWare Dictation Client (IDC). The IDC is a simple-to-use Windows program that allows the author to identify the patient or topic and begin dictating quickly with minimal effort. All communication between the IDC and InfraWare servers occurs over a secure/encrypted connection.
PDR – Personal Digital Recorders (PDRs), such as the Olympus DS-330 and several variations of the Pocket PC, such as the HP/Compaq iPAQ. Benefits of this method include portability. The author can carry the device on their person for convenience. The WAV recordings stored on the PDR are retrieved by the author or his or her support staff with the IDC.

Back-end Processing

The InfraWare Processing Center is a reliable array of servers that queue jobs for transcription workflow steps; provide back-end speech recognition and automatic document delivery. InfraWare’s primary production servers are located at Expedient (Expedient.com), a top-tier Midwest data center.

Transcription Processing

The InfraWare Transcription Client (ITC) is a modern, Windows .Net program. Operated by transcriptionists and QA managers, the ITC pulls jobs from the processing center and provides excellent productivity tools that promote fast editing and correction. When ASR is used, the ITC support synchronous playback of audio with text. The ITC includes a built-in word expander and medical spell check dictionary.

Management and Administration

With a volume of reports and participating users, management of the document flow becomes strategic. The InfraWare Management Console (IMC) is where the platform is administered and workflow is managed. By learning the comprehensive features that are available in the IMC, you'll be able to navigate between over 100 available functions with ease. Since it is a browser-based application, you can run it from any location with a secure login.

The IMC is a browser-based application. This new generation of sophisticated technology allows managers to choose which functions they need. For instance, a manager can examine and regulate the queue of dictations, set up or modify users, change customer settings, limit user access, identify quality assurance (QA) requirements, and enforce author sign-off needs. You'll be amazed by how much you can do to streamline your administration and quality assurance processes.

Post-Recognition Processing

In addition to the core speech recognition process, the InfraWare 360 platform supports post-recognition value-added processes. These include the addition of some non-dictated punctuation, recognition and formatting of numbered lists and much more.

Document Delivery

Upon completion of each report, delivery can be automatic or customer driven. Facility expectations for the delivery of completed reports are evolving rapidly. InfraWare is a technology partner that can handle the complexity and make your job easier. Supported delivery options include:

Document Delivery System (DDS)

The DDS is a hands-free automated service for delivering completed reports. Administrators set up simple patterns to instruct the DDS to deliver reports based on author criteria using the following transport methods:

Secure FTP - Transfer to a customer server via the sftp protocol. Custom filenames and data paths based on author and patient parameters are supported. File formats can be RTF, Doc, PDF or HL7.

Fax - Automatic transfer to any standard fax machine. Fax-on-demand is also supported for special addressing to referring physicians.

Remote Printing - Reports are printed by InfraWare servers to customer IP-enabled printers using the Post Script printing protocol. (KB89)

Secure Email Delivery - Secure Email Delivery is a HIPAA-compliant feature of the InfraWare 360 platform that allows for delivery of completed reports via email to any valid email address. (KB580)

Direct Messaging - DDS destination can be set up using that address. This DDS destination will behave the same as other destinations, in that you can choose the format of the completed jobs (PDF, DOC, RTF) and set up delivery plans. The documents will come through as attachments to the Direct message that InfraWare sends to the destination address. (KB750)

Custom Interface

As a solutions provider, InfraWare can customize our delivery services to accommodate most any EHR application format. We can accommodate an existing interface specification or work with another vendor to negotiate a format. In addition to delivery, interfaces are supported for retrieval of data from external systems such as ADT patient demographics.

Secure Web Portal

Authors who cannot support the above automatic delivery methods use the Web Portal to eSign, print or download their completed reports. The Portal is secure and easy to use. It can render completed documents in RTF, Doc and PDF formats for download. Reports can be viewed and even edited online in Internet Explorer (IE).

Thank You

Thank you for taking a look at InfraWare. There are many more resources available to learn more. For personal assistance, please contact InfraWare sales:

Email: Sales@InfraWare.com

Toll free: (877) 235-7239