Transcribing a medical dictation in a real-time stream - Amazon Transcribe

Transcribing a medical dictation in a real-time stream

Use a WebSocket stream to transcribe a medical dictation as an audio stream. You can also use the AWS Management Console to transcribe speech that you or others speak directly into a microphone.

For an HTTP/2 or a WebSocket stream, you can transcribe audio in the following medical specialties:

  • Cardiology

  • Oncology

  • Neurology

  • Primary Care

  • Radiology

  • Urology

Each medical specialty includes many types of procedures and appointments. Clinicians therefore dictate many different types of notes. Use the following examples as guidance to help you specify the value of the specialty URI parameter of the WebSocket request, or the Specialty parameter of the StartMedicalStreamTranscription API:

  • For a dictation after electrophysiology or echocardiogram procedure, choose CARDIOLOGY.

  • For a dictation after a surgical oncology or radiation oncology procedure, choose ONCOLOGY.

  • For a physician dictating notes indicating a diagnosis of encephalitis, choose NEUROLOGY.

  • For a dictation of procedure notes to break up a bladder stone, choose UROLOGY.

  • For a dictation of clinician notes after an internal medicine consultation, choose PRIMARYCARE.

  • For a dictation of a physician communicating the findings of a CT scan, PET scan, MRI, or radiograph, choose RADIOLOGY.

  • For a dictation of physician notes after a gynecology consultation, choose PRIMARYCARE.

To improve transcription accuracy of specific terms in a real-time stream, use a custom vocabulary. To enable a custom vocabulary, set the value of vocabulary-name to the name of the custom vocabulary you want to use.

To use the AWS Management Console to transcribe streaming audio of a medical dictation, choose the option to transcribe a medical dictation, start the stream, and begin speaking into the microphone.

To transcribe streaming audio of a medical dictation (AWS Management Console)

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console.

  2. In the navigation pane, under Amazon Transcribe Medical, choose Real-time transcription.

  3. Choose Dictation.

  4. For Medical specialty, choose the medical specialty of the clinician speaking in the stream.

  5. Choose Start streaming.

  6. Speak into the microphone.

To transcribe an HTTP/2 stream of a medical dictation, use the StartMedicalStreamTranscription API and specify the following:

  • LanguageCode – The language code. The valid value is en-US

  • MediaEncoding – The encoding used for the input audio. Valid values are pcm, ogg-opus, and flac.

  • Specialty – The specialty of the medical professional.

  • Type – DICTATION

For more information on setting up an HTTP/2 stream to transcribe a medical dictation, see Setting up an HTTP/2 stream.

To transcribe a medical dictation in a real-time stream using a WebSocket request, you create a presigned URI. This URI contains the information needed to set up the audio stream between your application and Amazon Transcribe Medical. For more information on creating WebSocket requests, see Setting up a WebSocket stream.

Use the following template to create your presigned URI.

GET wss://transcribestreaming.us-west-2.amazonaws.com:8443/medical-stream-transcription-websocket
?language-code=languageCode
&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256
&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE%2F20220208%2Fus-west-2%2Ftranscribe%2Faws4_request
&X-Amz-Date=20220208T235959Z
&X-Amz-Expires=300
&X-Amz-Security-Token=security-token
&X-Amz-Signature=Signature Version 4 signature 
&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host
&media-encoding=flac
&sample-rate=16000
&session-id=sessionId
&specialty=medicalSpecialty
&type=DICTATION
&vocabulary-name=vocabularyName
&show-speaker-label=boolean

For more information on creating pre-signed URIs, see Setting up a WebSocket stream.