Dictation program for a general practitioner

Potok turns speech into text in 33 languages, including English and Russian.

After an appointment a general practitioner fills in the outpatient chart, the discharge summary and the referral for lab tests. Potok (potok.now) inserts dictated text into the chart field with a hotkey on Windows, macOS and Linux; Potok gives about 900 characters per minute by voice against about 200 when typing. The model is trained for Russian speech, including terms like “anamnesis”.

Are you looking for a program that can dictate an outpatient chart instead of typing it after the appointment? Voice input inserts dictated text into any active field, including the chart, a discharge summary or a lab test referral, without switching between windows.

What program you need for dictation into a chart

You need a voice input program that inserts dictated text into any active field: the chart, a discharge summary, a referral. In Potok it works like this: you hold the hotkey (Ctrl+Space by default, but it can be changed in the settings to any key combination or a side mouse button), dictate a phrase and release the key. The text appears where the cursor is, with punctuation and capital letters placed automatically: you do not need to say “zapyataya” (comma) or “tochka” (period). Numbers, sums and time the program turns into digits itself, without a separate command. Recognition runs in the cloud: the recording goes to a server and comes back as text, so it does not work without the internet. The microphone listens only during recording, and it is chosen in the app settings or in the menu of its tray icon.

What the text looks like after dictation into a chart

The sample phrase for a chart is ours, not a verified result. The physician dictates it in Russian without pauses for punctuation: “patient complains of weakness anamnesis collected differential diagnosis is required between influenza and bronchitis diagnosis by ICD-10 not yet made”. The program places punctuation and capital letters automatically, so you do not need to dictate them separately. The model is trained for Russian speech, including terms like “anamnesis”, “differential diagnosis” and “ICD-10”; rarer words and colleagues' surnames are added to the personal dictionary on the Pro plan. The text lands where the cursor is, so you can continue working right away in the same chart, lab test referral or discharge summary. You do not need to dictate “tochka” (period) or “zapyataya” (comma) separately: they appear in the text themselves, and so does the appointment time if you say it in ordinary words: saying “chetyrnadtsat tridtsat” (fourteen thirty) becomes “14:30”. How the same documents are dictated in dentistry is covered in the article about voice input for a dentist (in Russian), and other specialties are in the collection on medical professions.

When this method does not fit

This method does not fit where there is no internet: Potok is a cloud service, recognition runs on servers in Russia, and it does not work without the internet. Information about a patient's visit, health and diagnosis is medical confidentiality: it may not be disclosed by anyone who learned it through work (Art. 13 323-FZ, where FZ means a Russian federal law), and health data is a special category of personal data (Art. 10 152-FZ). Potok has no voice commands for editing text and no phone apps either: you can dictate from a work computer or laptop, not from a smartphone. For a clinic where cloud services for medical records are forbidden by internal rules, only the business option with a server inside the company perimeter fits, on request. A related profession is in the article about voice input in a dentist's work (in Russian).

Frequently asked questions

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