Visual communication aids, such as handwriting or typing, are often used to communicate with deaf patients in the clinic. This study aimed to establish the feasibility of communicating through smartphone speech recognition software compared with writing or typing.

Thirty doctors and medical students were timed writing, typing and dictating a standard set of six sentences appropriate for a post-operative consultation, and the results were assessed for accuracy and legibility.

The mean time for smartphone dictation (17.8 seconds, 95 per cent confidence interval = 17.0–18.7) was significantly faster than writing (59.2 seconds, 95 per cent confidence interval = 56.6–61.7) or typing (44 seconds, 95 per cent confidence interval = 41.0–47.1) (p < 0.001). Speech recognition was slightly less accurate, but accuracy increased with time spent dictating.

Smartphone dictation is a feasible alternative to typing and handwriting. Slow speech may improve accuracy. Early clinical experience has been promising.

Practice-based performance measurement is fundamental for improvement and accountability in primary care. Traditional performance measurement of the patient’s experience is often too costly and cumbersome for most practices.

This scoping review explores the literature on the use of interactive voice response (IVR) telephone surveys to identify lessons for its use for collecting data on patient-reported outcome measures at the primary care practice level.

The literature suggests IVR could potentially increase the capacity to reach more representative patient samples and those traditionally most difficult to engage. There is potential for long-term cost effectiveness and significant decrease of the burden on practices involved in collecting patient survey data. Challenges such as low response rates, mode effects, high initial set-up costs and maintenance fees, are also reported and require careful attention.

This review suggests IVR may be a feasible alternative to traditional patient data collection methods, which should be further explored.