In fact, Datamonitor, an analyst firm, reported last December that "the potential for EHRs is not difficult to comprehend, but the adoption of the technology has been painfully slow."

Christine Chang, an analyst at Datamonitor, said that growth of EHR and underlying technologies such as speech recognition have increased in recent months. "The question is no longer, 'Do we need an EHR system?'" Chang said. "Now it's 'Which one should we invest in, and when can we start implementation?'"

Speech-to-text technology helps increase efficiencies, she said. "Clinicians who are not comfortable using a keyboard and mouse may find speech recognition a faster way to document patient information as well as easier to navigate through the EHR," Chang said. One plus is that when a provider finishes a patient's notes, the notes can be more quickly seen by other providers working on a case.

While Nuance dominates in the speech-to-text market for health care professionals, a speech recognition division of Royal Philips Electronics, is a strong competitor, she said. Philips has a point of entry with health professionals because it makes imaging and other medical technology.

Philips will be running a speech recognition track at Tuesday's Towards the Electronic Patient Record conference in the US, where Philips will present a number of customers. The vendor has documented a 40 per cent increase in productivity for transcriptions at Children's Hospital in Boston where 100 physicians use the technology, according to Philips' Web site.

Nuance said its Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical software, used by Rohan and others, is used by 6,000 clinicians in all branches of the military. Adoption of the technology by the US military's health system grew by 100 per cent over the last year, the company said.

In all, about 60,000 medical professionals use Dragon Medical for dictating records into an EHR product from one of many vendors, a Nuance spokeswoman said.