Artificial Medical Intelligence showcased Emscribe Dx, a system that automatically assigns ICD-9 codes to any free text document at HIMSS 2006 last month in San Diego. With its HL7 interface, it easily integrates with most hospital IT systems. Its knowledge base includes physician slang and colloquial terms for the more formal terminology found in the ICD9 corpus. This allows Emscribe Dx to provide more complete coding of medical documents. Furthermore, Emscribe Dx’s patent-pending natural language functions significantly reduce overcoding by “understanding” when the use of a medical term represents a codeable event and when it should be ignored. The system increases the performance of coders and increases productivity by about 40 percent, the company said.   

AMI also showed Emscribe VFx, its line of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solutions specifically designed for the healthcare industry. Emscribe VFx solutions can provide common IVR functions such as corporate directory, automated call distribution (ACD) and voicemail. Using AMI’s patent-pending large grammar technology, the company offers a wide variety of forms that can be filled out over the telephone. Since desktop environments are difficult to set up, expensive to maintain, and frequently are not convenient to use, they are not a good fit for many healthcare processes. Phone-based interfaces offer an attractive alternative because they are a reliable thin client, allow access to applications from virtually anywhere, and are easy and reliable to use.