A new zero-contact speech recognition system using artificial intelligence (AI) technology would help medical staff wearing personal protective equipment use computers, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital said on Wednesday.
The hospital developed the system in collaboration with Taiwan AI Labs after it had problems dealing with a surge in people seeking services at the hospital during a domestic COVID-19 outbreak that started in May, it said.
The hospital realized that staff wearing the protective equipment had problems when performing certain tasks, such as updating people’s medical records, the hospital said.
While usually updating the records immediately when attending to a patient, doctors now took notes afterwards, which increased the risk of error, it said.
Especially staff at screening stations, who are required to wear protective suits, masks and gloves, found it difficult to accurately type on a keyboard, it added.
After hearing of the problems, Taiwan AI Labs reached out to the hospital’s emergency medicine department director, Chiu Yi-min (邱義閔), suggesting a system using AI-based speech recognition technology, the hospital said.
The newly installed system would allow staff to make changes to medical files in real time and integrate data from different sources in the hospital’s records, it said.
Hospital superintendent Wang Chih-hsi (王植熙) said that the cooperation came at the right time, as the hospital had just started implementing Big Data and AI-based technologies to provide better medical services.
The hospital would continue to collaborate with Taiwan AI Labs to train the speech recognition AI, with the aim that the technology understands all relevant details of a dialogue between doctor and patient, Wang said.
Hopefully the system can help doctors make diagnoses and assess the severity of patients’ symptoms, he said.
Taiwan AI Labs said it has since May invested considerably in COVID-19-related technology, including a social distancing app and a diagnosis software.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods