I was fortunate enough to be invited to a little soirée this week at an intimate bar at Sydney’s trendy, soon to be engulfed by Barangaroo, King Street Wharf. The event was hosted by the happening team from BigHand Australia who are doing things in the legal and dictation world, not just here in Australia but around the world from their UK, US, Canada and Australia offices.
BigHand have developed a system to revolutionise dictation and transcription. With roots firmly planted in the medical and legal niche there really is no stopping BigHand from growing into other sectors. Essentially any business of any size which relies on dictation and transcription can utilise the BigHand software. Viewing some of the testimonials on their Australia website it is clear many are taking the leap as they transition from the technology of 20th century, analogue tapes, to the digital era of the 21st century. But the BigHand system is equally at home with those who have already embraced digital dictation as the dictation and transcription workflow system is just as comfy working with your firms existing fleet of Olympus or Philips pro dictation recorders and transcription kits.
Not content with revolutionising firms with tapes or empowering firms already digital the BigHand solution also encompasses the smart phone brigade with a dictation app for iPhone { 
}, Blackberry, Android and even Windows mobile. Leaving no excuse for anyone who dictates and is not in the office, just grab your phone launch the BigHand app and dictate until you can dictate no more. What raises BigHand’s head above the rest the ease of use and simplicity of their solution. I am still in the early stages of discovering just what it can do but from my trial in the Dictate Australia offices it has already sparked my interest. You now have simple options for your dictation, you can send it to your preferred typist, to your firms typing pool and the best bit, to Dragon for voice recognition; perfect for out of hours transcription of urgent notes or as a way to free up some WP resources. With Dragon you have the option to transcribe only or you can have Dragon transcribe and pass the completed document to your Word Processing team to simply proofread Dragon’s work, already a big time saver over tradition transcription. Your WP team can further improve the accuracy of your voice profile by applying selected proofed text back to your voice profile which increases the accuracy and essentially trains your profile for you. The more you train your profile the more accurate your documents the less proofing needs to be done the faster you get your transcript, magical.
From the testimonials I have read most firms are seeing a good to significant return on investment by switching to BigHand simply by smarter use of their WP resources, be they in one office, located around the country or across the globe. I plan to write more about BigHand, it’s movements in the Australian marketplace and the interesting stuff; the evolution, use and examples of the software and how it meshes with digital voice technology over the coming months. But for now, if you are in a law firm or involved with medical dictation you should be having a look at what BigHand have to offer. In Australian legal circles they already have an impressive stable of law partners boasting that 4 out of 5 of the top Australian law firms are using the BigHand system. Some of the law firms already in are:
- Arnold Bloch Leibler
- Blake Dawson
- Clayton Utz
- Crown Law QLD
- Deacons Hong Kong
- Dibbs Barker
- Duncan Basheer Hannon
- Finlaysons
- Freehills
- Gilbert + Tobin
- Hall & Wilcox
- HWL Ebsworth
- Mallesons Stephen Jaques
- MacDonnells Law
- Maurice Blackburn Cashman
- McCullough Robertson
- Meredith Connell
- Mills Oakley
- Minter Ellison
- Norman Waterhouse
- Russell Kennedy
- Simpson Grierson
- Sparke Helmore
- Swaab Legal
- WHK Western Victoria
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