'' If I knew how to get the message out, I would. '' - RamDas Singh Khalsa, Project Manager, HealthScribe India Pvt. Ltd., on dubious training institutes taking aspirant MTs for a ride.

There has been a lot of hype being attached to MT being an IT enabled service in India. To quote Mr Dertouzos (MIT), that's akin to calling accounting as pencil-enabled services. This has somehow spread the misconception that MT is basically a data entry job. We discussed in length the core skills required. ''Medical transcription does require certain skills and significant amounts of training. Only persons whose English skills are at least equivalent to those of a United States high school graduate (12th year, 9th month on the TOEFL scale) should enter medical transcription training. There are many other qualities that a potential trainee should possess, but minimum skills in English are most important,'' Mr Khalsa highlighted. He went on to add that in addition to all the medical terminology and MT skills needed to be assimilated during training, all trainees need extensive improvement in their English skills. In addition, they all need ample familiarization with American usage and euphemisms. In India, for the majority English is a second language. Medical Transcription training programs from the United States are designed for persons for whom English is the first language. Training programs in India must be modified to accommodate for this variance in order to suitably train transcriptionists. Doctors in the United States may be understanding of occasional errors in difficult medical terminology, but never accept errors in English or American usage, he explained.

Investment required in developing intangible assets in the form of human resources does effect the scalability of this business model in India. Many big Indian business houses when stepping into this industry quote that they would be training and employing above 1,500 MTs on location within six months. The same has also been endorsed as feasible by neutral non-profit and semi-government organizations. We attempted to imbibe from ground realities and HealthScribe's experience. ''Our experience over the last five years has taught us at HealthScribe that the ideal size of an incoming class of trainees is about 50 persons. By outsourcing the classroom portion of our training program to NEXT, we are presently able to start a new class of 50 persons each month. It has taken us quite some time to be able to get to the point where we have enough qualified trainers to grow at this pace.'' informed Mr Khalsa.

Training is the basic criteria, which sets apart an MT whether in India or the US. However many unscrupulous parties are offering mediocre training at high costs. How does one grade a training establishment, we queried of Mr Khalsa. '' In the past month, I have come across two Bangalore training facilities which charged around Rs.15,000 per person for training with a guaranteed job at Rs.5,000 per month following training. In both cases, the fees were collected, training of questionable quality was given, but there was no job. Now the trainees are out a lot of money, don't know if they are really properly trained and have no job. This is tragic for the MTs. If I knew how to get the message out, I would, '' he responded. His message to all new aspirants looking towards MT as a career is:'' Be extremely thorough in checking out a potential training school before handing over any money. I would want to know as much as possible about the financial stability of the organization as well as the qualifications of the trainers. Many persons have opened weakly financed training schools because they couldn't afford to open a production center. All I can suggest is be extremely careful. Don't accept training schools merely on their word, do all the checking you can.''

We proceeded to discuss career options for an MT. In a large company, such as HealthScribe, there are a variety of career paths for transcriptionists, he informed. Some of them may remain contented as successful medical transcriptionists. A medical transcriptionist who consistently produces large volumes of excellent quality work is appropriately compensated financially. Some medical transcriptionists become full-time proofreaders. Others become team leaders (managers) while some move into training.