Today Amazon launched a new product called Amazon Transcribe Medical, which is a healthcare-specific speech-to-text program. From Amazon: “Amazon Transcribe Medical uses machine learning to provide highly accurate automatic speech recognition (ASR) for the medical industry. You can use Transcribe Medical to quickly and efficiently capture physician-patient conversations in text for later analysis using natural language processing or for entry into electronic health record (EHR) systems, because the service is trained to understand the terminology and style of clinical language.”
Microsoft is developing a similar product that will compete with Amazon’s, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see other speech-to-text companies move into this lucrative space.
This product launch is the latest in a near-constant stream of tech giants entering the healthcare market. Established players like Google and Microsoft, as well as newer companies like Uber and Lyft have all made significant strides into health services. With an aging population and advanced automation on the horizon, expect to see these companies become a threat to traditional software companies and even certain types of healthcare providers.