Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42853293›Full record

ArticleJournal of medical systems2026

A Controlled Single-Speaker Evaluation of Ambient Voice Technologies' Speech-to-Text Function Using Narrated Surgical Case-Reports.

Ruairi O'Kane, Daniel Stonehouse-Smith, Melody Shirazi, Rachel Hutchinson, Morgan Gregg, Riya Patel, Jadbinder Seehra, Spyridon N Papageorgiou, Martyn T Cobourne

Abstract read
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In one paragraph

Article in Journal of medical systems, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
0citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

9 authors.

Ruairi O'KaneFaculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences, Centre for Craniofacial Development & Regeneration, King's College London, Floor 27, SE1 9RT, London, UK.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7287-364X
Daniel Stonehouse-SmithFaculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences, Centre for Craniofacial Development & Regeneration, King's College London, Floor 27, SE1 9RT, London, UK.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1096-5012
Melody ShiraziDepartment of Orthodontics, Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK.
Rachel HutchinsonDepartment of Orthodontics, Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK.
Morgan GreggDepartment of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery, King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK.
Riya PatelFaculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences, Centre for Craniofacial Development & Regeneration, King's College London, Floor 27, SE1 9RT, London, UK.
Jadbinder SeehraFaculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences, Centre for Craniofacial Development & Regeneration, King's College London, Floor 27, SE1 9RT, London, UK.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3243-1580
Spyridon N PapageorgiouFaculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences, Centre for Craniofacial Development & Regeneration, King's College London, Floor 27, SE1 9RT, London, UK.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1968-3326
Martyn T CobourneFaculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences, Centre for Craniofacial Development & Regeneration, King's College London, Floor 27, SE1 9RT, London, UK. martyn.cobourne@kcl.ac.uk.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2857-0315

Funding

Medical Research Council MR/X001725/1
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Ambient voice technologies (AVT) utilise automatic speech recognition (ASR) and generative artificial intelligence for speech-to-text conversion, and are advocated as efficient, accurate tools for clinical documentation. We investigated (n = 8) AVT systems using surgical case-reports as narratives in a controlled single-speaker evaluation prioritising safety outcomes: specifically 3 commercial transcription-systems (Dragon-Medical-One, Heidi-Health, Tortus); 4 ASR speech-to-text Application Programming Interfaces (Speechmatics-Enhanced, Amazon-Medical-Transcribe, Whisper, GPT4oTranscribe); and an experimental two-stage ASR-Large Language Model (LLM) pipeline incorporating GPT4oTranscribe with GPT-5-LLM generative error correction (GPT4oTranscribe-Corrected-5). Reference-transcripts (n = 100; 32,897 words, range = 44-449, mean = 329/per-transcript) derived from surgical case-reports were recorded and input into AVT systems as audio-recordings for transcription-output generation. Primary outcome was proportion of transcription-outputs containing at least one clinically significant Class 3 error graded for potential harm. Secondary outcomes included transcription accuracy: Domain-Word-Error-Rate (DWER) against SNOMED-CT, lexical-accuracy (ROUGE score) and semantic similarity (BERT, BART scores). To investigate impact of the experimental pipeline on clinically significant errors, raw ASR and LLM-processed transcription-outputs were compared and errors classified as resolved, remaining or newly introduced. Across (n = 800) transcript-outputs, 30-68% (GPT4oTranscribe-Corrected-5; Amazon-Medical-Transcribe and Dragon-Medical-One, respectively) contained at least one clinically significant Class 3 error. LLM-processing reduced the proportion of transcript-outputs affected (53% to 30%), amongst 89 clinically significant errors in ASR-output, 51 were resolved, 38 remained significant and 4 were newly introduced. Reference-transcript length significantly increased odds of Class 3 errors for 4 systems (GPT4oTranscribe, Tortus, Amazon-Medical-Transcribe, Dragon-Medical-One; odds ratio 2.65-3.34/additional 100 reference-words). Errors with potential to cause severe harm or death (NHS England Level 3-4) totalled (n = 53) across systems, concentrated in the domains of medication-type/dose (39.6%), and investigations/laboratory results (30.2%). Performance varied across systems for transcription metrics (P < 0.001). GPT4oTranscribe-Corrected-5 (DWER = 3.60%) and Heidi-Health (DWER = 5.67%) performed best for medical terminology; Amazon-Medical-Transcribe worst (DWER = 24.03%). For lexical and semantic similarity GPT4oTranscribe-Corrected-5 performed best, followed by Heidi-Health. The ASR-LLM pipeline reduced clinically significant errors but did introduce new ones in 3% of transcript-outputs. The safety and effectiveness of these systems in clinical practice requires further evaluation.

Indexed as

Case Reports as TopicSpeech Recognition SoftwareGenerative Artificial IntelligenceHumansLarge Language ModelsNarrationArtificial intelligenceMedical recordsNatural language processingSpeech recognition softwareSurgeryTranscription accuracy

Identifiers

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Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.