For the last two to three years, some entrepreneurs in Bangladesh have been struggling hard to secure their entry into the US market of medical data transcription through an unequal competition with India which already had a firm footing in the field. But anticipating the huge potentials and sensing an ample employment opportunities for our promising youth forces, a huge investment has already been made in the sector for establishing infrastructure, providing training to the trainee Medical Transcriptionists (MTs), development of training modules, materials, and other related fields to tap the opportunities and proceed on with the country's immense potentials for earning foreign exchange. So far some 2000 personnel have been trained by different companies in phases. Though 4 companies are now working in the field on trial basis, but this is so insignificant in terms of work volume and reliability that it's very difficult for them alone to run the business for long if the principal companies in USA do not response positively. Some officials claim that they had already trained a significant number of people for the purpose and attained the confidence they needed most to deliver quality services to its clientele with professionalism. And this is the right time for American Association for Medical Transcription (AAMT) to look back to Bangladesh and its skilled manpower with immense potentials to get their purpose served. In brief, they just can rely now on our workforce.

 

Medical data transcription: What it stands for?

In the developed countries like USA, UK all doctors or medical consultants who visit and diagnose patients usually dictate the report of their patients on a Dictaphone. Because they are so busy that they cannot prepare the report by themselves and they had to depend on others for a prepared report. As all medical centers are required to be insured, the insurance companies enforce that all reports must be transformed in a typed format in a computerized system for electronic storage. The sound tracks of this dictation are changed into digital form and then sent to developing countries like ours. The task of composing voice dictation into a typed text format is described as medical data transcription.

Who are here to serve you?

RORA Technologies is one of the leading firms working in this sector since 1999 with 60 computers and equal number of medical transcriptionists. The Managing Director of RORA, Major (retd) Mohd. Akhtaruzzaman said, "We are fully equipped with enough trained personnel, what we require right now is trust on us from the other end, the principal companies of the USA." Akhtaruzzaman also claimed of producing 10,000 lines of works per day with accuracy level of 98%. Tashfin Haq, Director of Data Trek Ltd., another firm doing production work with SBA of USA, told, " As far as future prospect is concerned, this industry has all ingredients needed to flourish itself like garment industries across the country". He also sought government assistance and proper attention for flourishing the business in the country.

The Bangladeshi companies are also giving assurance of quality work and service at a very reasonable and competitive price within the deadline of high volume of work (Turn Around Time --TAT) by utilizing the state of the art technology and highly trained professionals. They also maintain strict confidentiality and privacy as required by medical ethics and statutory regulations. The overall services they can provide now for doctors, hospitals, medical clinics, nurse parishioners, therapists, psychologists, insurance companies and managed medicare services.

The different fields and branches of medical science they cover are as follows:

Single platform to share well and woes

One of the officials of Software Ingenuity Ltd. proposed formation of a single platform to share the problems and bottlenecks at the early stage of their struggle to secure market for survival and make it booming like garment industries. But Major Akhtaruzzaman opposes such ideas saying, 'time is not ripe'. All officials, however, are in harmony that they are confident enough with their present trained work force to provide the quality service required by AAMT and hence they should get the positive response from principal companies in the USA.

Transcription works done by different companies encompasses the following areas: