Voice-to-Text in OpenEMR: What’s Possible Today?

[Jazmine_Br]

Hi everyone,

We’re actively exploring ways to add speech-to-text support to OpenEMR to help doctors document more efficiently and reduce manual note-taking.

If someone wanted to use voice input in OpenEMR today:
• What options are available?
• Has anyone worked on something similar?
• Are there any tools, experiences, or lessons learned, even unsuccessful
ones, that you’d be willing to share?
Any insights would be really helpful as we shape our next steps.

Thanks so much,
Jasmine

[luisuriarte (Luis Angel Uriarte)]

Speech Recognition

Hello OEMR Users, I work in the speech recognition space and I had a client reach out asking about this solution. After reading some and learning more about this project I wanted to reach out and see what other folks have used on this platform for speech recognition and whether or not there was any growing need that isn’t addressed yet? If anyone out there has something that they would like addressed by speech recognition I would be interested hear about it. Thank you, Chris

[Jazmine_Br]

@luisuriarte
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your response!
Would love to hear more about your client’s needs and what you’ve seen work (or not work) so far.
Any insight would be super helpful as we explore this.

[Infeg_Services (Infeg)]

@Jazmine_Br

We had done speech-to-text integration 3 -4 years ago for some of our clients in their SOAP forms and custom built forms (using google translate).

At that time that was the good option. It worked seamlessly.

Thank You
Infeg Team
services@infeg.com

INFEG

[Jazmine_Br]

@Infeg_Services
Hi Infeg Team,

Thanks so much for jumping in. Really interesting to hear that you implemented this a few years ago!

Would you be open to sharing a bit more about:
What the technical integration looked like?
Any limitations or lessons learned along the way?
And whether your clients are still using it today?

We’re gathering as much insight as we can from past efforts to help shape what could come next.

Thanks again!

[Jazmine_Br]

Whoops — tagging fail on my part!
Thanks @luisuriarte for actually being the one who brought Chris’s post back into the spotlight. That thread really helped shape this whole discussion.

And @faster-than-human now that you’ve been double-summoned — would love to hear any thoughts or experiences you might want to throw in!

[Jazmine_Br]

Hi all,

Just wanted to follow up and share that I’ve been reviewing earlier discussions around voice input and dictation in OpenEMR.

Over the years, there have been several interesting attempts, from experiments with Dragon and CKEditor plugins to open-source tools like Simon and DeepSpeech.

Here are a few past threads, listed chronologically:

• Dragon dictation setup (2009)

Dragon - Dictation setup

juggernautsei wrote on Friday, November 12, 2010: Hello! Has anyone setup dictation on the system using Dragon software? Can the dictation software “type” directly in the OpenEMR note area? Thanks! Sherwin

• Speech dictation experiences (2017)

Speech dictation

Hello, Does anyone use speech dictation software, and if so, what is your experience? Do you use Dragon or something else? Thank you!

• Open-source speech recognition (2017)

Open source speech recognition

Could the Mozilla DeepSpeech project be something that could be used to make Openemr essentially the first EMR with built in voice dictation ?

• Voice dictation software (2019)

Voice Dictation software

Hello! Can I use voice dictation software (like MMode or Dragon) with the openEMR? If so, is there a specific software that works?

• Voice to Text with AI revision assistance (2025)

Voice to Text with AI revision assistance

We have added this feature to LBF-generated forms. The feature is voice-to-text which is not new. The “Revise with AI” is new for us. We developed this to work with any LBF form generated with a tag. We developed this for behavioral health but can be configured for any specialty. [AI Assisted Note]

Each of these threads shows different angles and motivations, but it’s not clear if any of them led to a long-term solution.

I’m curious, does the community still feel there’s a strong need for voice input in OpenEMR today?
Would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks again.

[juggernautsei (Sherwin Gaddis)]

I have posted this video before. here is it is again. I have this implemented in version 7.0.2 (1). The way it is built is similar to what @sjpadgett did with nation note. It will attach to any text area only that is on a page. The revise button transmits the text to the AI with a prompt of what type of persona, voice, and tone to use for revising the text and populates it back into the text areas.

AI Tech speech to text

[Jazmine_Br]

@juggernautsei

Thanks a lot for re-sharing this Sherwin. Really appreciate it.

Do you recall whether this approach was ever used in production, or if it stayed more of a proof of concept?

I’m trying to map out what’s been explored so far and understand what has actually worked or stuck.

Also curious, from your perspective, do you think the OpenEMR community is still interested in capabilities like this, or perhaps even broader AI features?

[juggernautsei (Sherwin Gaddis)]

Yes, I have it in production. This not a concept.

[Jazmine_Br]

That’s great to hear Sherwin, really appreciate the confirmation.

If you’re open to sharing, I’d love to learn more about how you set it up.

What tools did you use and what kind of forms or workflows is it integrated into?

Any lessons or challenges you ran into would be super helpful too.

[juggernautsei (Sherwin Gaddis)]

Jazmine, I won’t divulge to much. You can ask more questions. What tools did I use? I used a voice to text process that has been around for a long time. It is nothing new. I am not sure how to answer the workflow question.

The tech is attached to the LBF form. So, any LBF form that is generated with a text area will have this tech applied to it like the nations notes.

It was interesting that when I deployed the tech for a client to test and use. They don’t use the revise with AI as much as I thought they would. I don’t know how much they are using the speech to tech because it is enclosed within the application. It is not a third party service like the AI is.

[Jazmine_Br]

Thanks again for sharing this in detail, Sherwin.

It’s really helpful to understand how it’s been used in practice, especially with LBF forms.

Appreciate the insight!