Developing and evaluating a wireless speech-and-touch-based interface for intelligent comprehensive triage support systems.

Continuous speech recognition (CSR) technology appears promising in mobile nursing but is not yet well studied. We developed and evaluated bimodal CSR and touchscreen triage support systems in the Emergency department (ED) of a medical center with 2700 beds in 2004-5. Evaluation results show that the average accuracy rates of systems ranged from 94 to 98%. Results suggest that the ED nurses were significantly more willing to use CSR combined with touchscreen systems than the others, such as PDA and CSR alone. A more flexible interface, not efficiency, might be the main reason for this finding.