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MT India Digest
Moderated Discussion List
"Effective MT Forum"
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Published by:
MT India www.MTIndia.org Moderated by:
Amit Chatterjee,SM
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Mar 13, 2002 Digest #078
.................................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ======MODERATOR COMMENT ======= -="I've Learned So Much....from YOU"=- ~Maj (Dr.) Amit Chatterjee, SM
"Once young and beautiful, now old and wise!" =========FEATURED POST=========== -=The Blakes Go to India - Part 5=- ~Cheryl and Joe Blake
"The first thing we noticed about Chennai was that the traffic
actually moved!" ===========CONTINUING============ -=Are we a bunch of losers?=- ~George J. Ollapally
"Confessions of a Transcription Man" ~Debra Beal, CMT
"Stand Up and Be Counted!" ~Kshitij Kansal
"Irony of the Indian MT Industry" =========MODERATOR COMMENT=========== Dear fellow MTIDer.... I've learned so much....from YOU!!! This discussion list completes
three years tomorrow. Those early days before MTIndia.org was
conceptualized were something else, and of the original six on this
list, I appear to be the only survivor - I would love to be
corrected on that! "Data -> Information -> Knowledge -> Wisdom"; we have turned a full
circle, with your help. The most exciting thing about being part of
this online community is watching others, seeing them succeed and
emulating their success. It's really been fun, education and
privilege being moderator of this list. I hope the experience has
been mutual. With due regards to all, I am laying a wreath on the thread -
"Frauds in MT". This is not due to any extraneous compulsions, our
editorial integrity remains - and I am open as always to answer
anything in this forum. For aggrieved people, MTs and businessmen,
we are opening a new section in this list -=ROG=- "Redressal of
Grievance", but facts as claimed have to be reasonably supported. I'll let you get back to the Blake's travels, and ahead. Just to
remind you, there are attractive cash prizes and accolades waiting
for the hidden writer in you! For details see:
http://www.mtindia.org/awards.htm Let us usher in the Spring, and a Happy New Year to all! Your Striving Moderator,
Amit Chatterjee, SM
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"Once young and handsome, now old and wise!" =========FEATURED POST=========== From: Cheryl Blake <
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Subject: Part 4 - Trip to Chennai Continued from MTID #77........... February 25, 2000 So, Joe called the last installment to our India saga, "Feast or
Famine". Confused? You'll have to read his next episode. Stay
tuned, y'all. Okay, we've just arrived in Chennai (Madras). It's 9:30 at night.
We've just stepped off an air-conditioned train into..a blast
furnace..a sauna, a steam bath. It's at least 20 degrees hotter
than Bangalore. It's at least 90% humidity, with no rain in sight.
Ron led us through the throngs of people to his car, got us settled
in and we set off for their house. The first thing we noticed
about Chennai was that the traffic actually moved! We were actually
exceeding speeds of 30 mph something we hadn't done in a car since
arriving in India. We arrived at Casa Straatsma at about 10:30 p.m. Their little ones
were already asleep. Ours were buzzing from the excitement of
being somewhere new. They found Legos to play with.'nuff said.
They were right at home. The grownups relaxed around the dining
room table, had some fruit and cheese and the company of our
gracious hosts. We dined on the food that we didn't need to take
on the train with us. Coincidentally, we brought Gouda cheese with
us, a Dutch cheese that the Straatsma family was missing mightily.
We had great bread. We had beer. We settled in and enjoyed our
meal. We calmed down and cooled off. Ron and Pam are the proud
owners of TWO air conditioners. This is not a luxury in Chennai,
it is a necessity. They made us comfy and let us sleep in their
bedroom, and they camped out in the kids' room. We slept for the
first time in mosquito netting.an adventure. Johnny thinks sleeping
in the tents is "cool". We promised him he could have a tent of
his own when we got back to Bangalore. Pam and I continue to marvel at the similarities in our characters,
likes and dislikes, parenting styles and favorite colors. It's
difficult to find things we don't share the same passion for.guess
that's why we chose similar life paths. After a while, we stopped
being surprised, and just accepted the fact that we were somehow
joined at the brain. The next morning, after a delicious breakfast of Bombay toast
(that's what they call French toast here), we piled the 8 of us
into 2 cars and headed off down the coast highway to Mammalapuram,
a mouthful that I haven't quite got the hang of saying yet, which I
henceforth called "M'puram" because I mangle it way too badly to
keep torturing everyone with it. What we saw there was rural
India, all by the side of the road. We saw shops and stands and
carts and stalls and blankets, all of which served as the biggest
open-air market ever. The highway was the most alive place I've
ever experienced. It was alive with color. The bougainvillea was
in full bloom, in nearly every color imaginable. It was alive with
LIFE! There were many people. There were people walking, waiting
at bus stops, and sitting on blankets selling little fish that
shone silvery in the sun. We think they were anchovies, but
perhaps they were sardines. We saw pushcarts and wheelbarrows and
bicycles. There were temples every place we looked. There was new
construction, old construction, under construction and under
destruction. There was animal life, just coexisting with the
people, doing what they do in the wild. There were all kinds of
birds, pigeons and swallows, chickens, roosters, geese and a
turkey, I think. Surprisingly, I saw no seagulls, even through we
were at the seashore. There were all manner of four-legged
creatures. There were oxen, horses, mules, cows, calves, sheep,
and goats, There was something that was buried up to its nostrils
in a swampy looking place that could have been a hippopotamus, but
was probably a cow just cooling herself off. There were dogs
everywhere. There are dogs all over India, living wild. Since
we've been here, I believe I have seen only one cat. Chennai is on the east coast of South India on the Bay of Bengal on
the Indian Ocean. . Looking out to sea, there is nothing.
Somewhere out there, a long way from this place, the next land is
Thailand. On we drove. We passed schools and farms and mansions
and huts and a drive-in movie! Yup, you read that right, a
drive-in. Complete with big box office Indian movies
and a drive in restaurant. It's a happenin' place, I'm told. We
passed something called "Dizzy Land", an amusement park. We passed
an alligator farm. We passed idyllic resorts with bazillion dollar
views. We passed salt farms, where they evaporate sea water to
make mineral-rich salt. Pam and Ron booked us all reservations at a resort, the "Silver
Sands". The place was past its prime, but was still quite
beautiful. There was a swimming pool and a wading pool and a
Jacuzzi. There were gardens, all manicured and perfect. There
were trees that looked for all the world like athol trees, just
like in the Mojave desert. There were date palms and
coconut palms. The rooms were all like separate cottages, set up
like duplexes, upstairs and down. The cottages had seen better
days, but the place had "character". Our room was upstairs. It had a front porch, a back porch and a
main room. Most importantly, it had an air conditioner and mosquito
netting. It also had ants. The bathroom was alive with tiny ants.
I went to housekeeping and asked them to do something about the
ants. Joe took the boys to the pool, and I set about depopulating
our room of any non-human lifeforms. When the janitor came to see
what I was complaining about, he brought a rag and a broom. After
he saw how many ants there were, he came back with another man, and
the BAYGON. I am sure that this stuff is illegal in the States. I
had to convince the two men to take breathing breaks between
fumigations. They were undaunted. They sprayed and scooped, yes, I
did say scooped, buckets full of ants from behind the mirror in the
bathroom. I tipped them and thanked them, and we saw no more ants.
That delightful experience over with, I proceeded to go on with
enjoying the weekend.and enjoy we did. Our children found their fun zone in the form of the kiddie pool.
Duly sunscreened and swimsuited, they frolicked and romped and
leaped in the water, which was knee deep for them. It was perfect!
Actually, it was even more perfect than that. The place was full
of children, from everywhere. Most of the foreigners (that's US,
y'all) were here in India on business. There was the French family
who are staying in Bombay; Dad's a banker there. They had one child
Robbie's age. Another French family who were visiting from Delhi,
where Dad did some software kind of thing had 3 children, one who
was the same age as Johnny and Mikaila, and 2 younger ones. We
were in kid heaven! Imagine this, we had been at the seashore for nearly 2 hours and
still hadn't seen the ocean. Unheard of! Pam and I took a stroll
over a little bridge, less than a block away from the pool, and
there ... was a shop. The ocean would wait. Without hesitation,
we both were drawn to the same Kashmiri tapestries and colors and
patterns and chose the same items. Weird, huh? Leaving
empty-handed, we headed off for the beach, another 50 steps away.
It was beautiful. The ocean water was a different color than I'd
ever seen.blue-er, I think. The beach was clean, and deserted,
something I'd never seen in the daylight before. For all of my
life, the beach was such a crowded place, unpleasantly so that I
usually wanted to go to the beach at night, when no one else was
there. Here we were, in this faraway place, alone on the beach. The rest of the day was a blur of water and happy children. You'd
think that was enough to make this weekend a success. More wonders
awaited us, however. There was a restaurant on the beach, in a
screened tent. Of course, the kids just saw the restaurant as a
huge, shady sandbox with tables. They played contentedly for the
longest time - finding "treasure" in the sand. The high point of
the entire weekend came when night fell. Sitting in our sandbox cum
restaurant, the full moon rose over the ocean, casting a silver
beam onto the water. It was spectacular! As this restaurant was a
screened in tent, with room for about 50 people, and there were
only two other couples in there, we stayed there drinking coffee
and listening to our children play, watching the moon until way too
late. It was the most relaxed we'd been in months. Time felt like
it stood still. This was the crowning conclusion to an idyllic day.
With happy children, good company, full tummies and the moonlight
over a foreign sea, we said good night and went off to our cottage
for a good night's sleep. ........to be continued. (c) Cheryl and Joe Blake
39685 Mountain View Road
P.O. Box 205
Yermo, CA 92398-0205 Comment?
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===============CONTINUING=================== From: George J. Ollapally <
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Subject: Confessions of a Transcription Man Dear MTIDers: Having discussed the possibility of entering this new field in Feb
1995, I was given the task, by DTS America Inc., Nashville of
getting a team together and funding in place for an India startup
based at Bangalore. I roped in my friend and neighbour, Mahidhar
Reddy later of CBay fame), to look for a funder who would be
willing to join hands with us. Reddy found such a person, and we
started up our company with him as wholetime Managing Director, me
as a Director, and our VC as chairman. As an MBA from XLRI, with
nearly 20 years industrial experience this was something right up
my alley! Early days in transcription were, to put it mildly, challenging.
Healthscribe and Selectronics were the two players in the field,
and our company, Qualiscribe, was the third entrant, to the best of
my knowledge. We got a set of training tapes from the AAMT, and
started out to invent the wheel here. Footpedals were not used, nor
were transcription headphones. Today we are light years ahead of
those early "stone age" days. Many innovations were developed by us, including writing software
to use the keyboard instead of footpedals, using professors from
local medical colleges to conduct classes, and the like. Dell 486
computers, with 8 MB of RAM and 14 inch colour monitors were
imported from the US at around $1500 each. Sadly 2 years into its
life Qualiscribe folded up, because the company was not breaking
even, Reddy having got disillusioned and leaving 6 months prior to
its closing up. The beginnings though, were promising enough for DTS to decide to
start its own wholly owned subsidiary here in Bangalore, and a CMT
from DTS was sent to assist in starting up the operation. Its just
under five years now, and today DTS has broken even (though it will
take some more time for us to start making real money), and the way
has been pretty interesting. Subho Dasgupta's, email last week
asking whether anyone who has been in this business, and was on our
team in Bangalore, for an eventful year, before moving to
Hyderabad, is the reason for my sharing some experiences with the
others on this newletter. (Hope you're doing well Subho!) Having been in this business now for about 7 years, and having
visited and seen this industry from the US end ( going there three
times in the past 3 years), I can modestly claim to be one of the
pioneers in India. What are the lessons that I have drawn? Some of them, in brief, are
as follows: 1. This is a business that is not for the fainthearted or those
without the necessary resources. Unless one has enough funding, to
meet development costs and start up expenses, one is better off
giving this a pass. Unlike tradtional industries, one cannot see
returns coming in quickly. 2. Funding agencies will avoid you. Computer hardware and software
are not easily fundd by funding agencies-unless one gives
collateral security. Consequently equity funding is the way to
fund, and that is easier said than done. 3. Training is the key, along with a good quality monitoring
programme. 4. The market is growing, especially on account of HIPAA. There is
a shortage of transcriptionists in the US, and good Indian
transcriptionsts can deliver work equal to or better than American
transcriptionists. Indian companies will have to go into the US
marketplace and pound pavements to get trial orders, prove their
abilities and then the market will gradually open up. Expecting to
develop business over the net is neither realistic, nor smart. 5. Many American intermediaries even now assume that we are ready
to work for sweat shop rates. I remember one gentleman, who is now
well known in the industry,(and who shall remain nameless) telling
me in 1995 that he would be willing to buy whatever we could sell
him-at 2 cents a line! This was when the $ traded for Rs 31.40.
Unless the rate per line is a decent rate, it just isnt worth it. A
"decent rate" is not a fixed one-a low cost operator may have one
rate, a home based transcriptionist may have another. 6. No speech recognition software package is going to wipe this
business out overnight. In 1995 when I first asked about speech
recognition I was told that it was perhaps 5 years away. In 1999,
when I asked the same question, I was given the same answer. This
year I was told that there were some signs of speech recognition
making some headway, but that it was still some way away.
Physicians in the US don't find it worth their while to spend time
getting the software ready to recognise their speech patterns, and
until a super product comes as a result of a major breakthough I
suspect things will remain as they are for the foreseable future. In late 1999, when KP Shetty of City Info Services decided to run a
series of seminars on medical transcription at major cities in
India, he asked me if I would be interested in being a speaker.
While business engagements prevented me from being present at
Chennai, Hyderabad and New Delhi, I was able to be present at some
other cities. Later on I also got an opportunity to speak in
Bangladesh. My purpose in taking time off from work and speaking at all these
seminars was simple. I wanted to share my experiences, and
forcefully tell people that there was more to medical transcription
than met the eye, that this was not "software", and there were many
pitfalls. I also warned people to avoid consultants, because inmy
view there was no one with a credible track record. Despite this I
find that many people have flocked into this industry and burnt
their fingers, because of lack of preparation, lack of research and
often lack of funds. Maybe this is a better time for people to
organise a workshop to discuss our experiences. The market is so huge and the share of Indian companies so minute
that we really don't need to view each other as threats in sharing
our experiences! Even today, a stock question I am asked by most
people I meet in the industry is "How many lines per day are you
doing"? My rejoinder to this is "Enough volume"! I suggest that
instead of looking at what others are doing, focus energies on
one's own operation. Asking this question, is in my view, like
asking " How much did you eat today (or yesterday)"? Is it all
relevant? The scenario today is a bit different from earlier times, because
call centres and various other back office activities have grown
larger than medical transcription, and the manpower pool is not
very much larger, so competition for people has become acute.
Despite that, a well prepared and well funded entity, can in my
view still make decent returns from this business, given adequate
time to gestate. The pool of experienced people has grown to a
large level, the pool of people who can manage is much bigger, and
acceptance by the market place is also much more than in 1995. All
these are key factors that will help India increase its revenues
from this industry. George J Ollapally
Director, DTS Information Systems Private Limited
Bangalore. Comment?
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++++ new post - same topic ++++ From: Debra Beal <
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>
Subject: "Stand Up and Be Counted!" Dear Amit and MTIDers: When I was approached a few months ago regarding my interest in
helping to establish an "Indian Association for Medical
Transcription (IAMT)" based on the standards and ethics demanded by
our American equivalent (AAMT), I was initially a bit nervous in
beginning this venture. One of the reasons for my reticence was
the question which always crops up, "How will I benefit from
membership in such an organization." Since the benefits are not
always of a tangible nature, let me share some of the long-term
advantages. One assumption presumed by many American hospitals and physicians
associated with Indian transcriptionists is that the quality of
work from India is of a lesser quality than that of American
transcriptionists. This belief is caused by the poor standards
which were adopted by a few Indian transcription companies over the
past few years. It is not fair that we should all bear the burden
in this regard, but there is only one way that we can combat it.
That is with development of an association which sets standards by
which we all should operate. Consistency and accuracy are the keys
to keeping our customers satisfied by ensuring that only documents
of the highest quality are relayed to our clients. Another benefit would be the opportunity to voice our concerns,
complaints, and questions, and share our knowledge by means of a
central forum. We can all speak out individually, but only when
our combined voices are heard will we actually see the desired
results. For instance, why is the CMT examination not conducted in
India, and how many of you are keen to acquire this credential???
The current scenario is not favorable, but our collective force may
be just what is needed to tip the scales in our direction. Lastly, an association solely for Indian MTs and created by Indian
MTs would give us an arena to provide professional enrichment
through continuing education by means of annual meetings and
conferences. I would suggest that we all give our time and efforts to
development and establishment of an Indian Association for Medical
Transcription to help us cultivate the high standards required of
our industry. Let the rest of the world recognize that India and
Indian transcriptionists are equal to their American counterparts
in dedication and hard work. Regards to all, Debra A. Beal, CMT
Manager, Professional Development, Training
HealthScribe India Ltd.
www.healthscribeindia.com Comment?
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++++ new post - same topic ++++ From: Kshitij Kansal <
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>
Subject: Irony of the Indian MT Industry Dear Amit and MTIDers: I have been a frequent visitor of MTIndia.org for a long time now
and appreciate the efforts of Amit and the MT India Team for
achieving so much popularity in the MT community both in India and
abroad. I have been a keen observer of the views of the fellow community
members who have been sharing their views on almost all the
problems being faced by them while into this business/profession
sooner or later. Of late, more and more entrepreneurs have come up
complaining about being cheated by renowned companies and/or
consultants. As per my experience of about 5 years into the
industry, having exposure of working with big and small companies
as an employee as well as consultant and lately an independent
contractor, the irony that I have come across is the strange
mentality of the Indian entrepreneur of MT industry who does want
to earn Dollars in the least possible time, but does not mind to
bother much about the standards and prerequisites of the
trade/industry. I do have an example of one of my prospective client, who consulted
me for the project of an MT unit on turn-key basis and after
getting the details of the course-of-action finalized, turned up to
a personal contact who assured him of getting the project done in
about half of the cost. But I felt pity for that client when I
came to know that his personal contact charged him the same amount
of fees and lead him to land up nowhere, not even to the completion
of basic infrastructure and walked out just 2-3 months later. Another irony of the industry is the rates being quoted by the
entrepreneurs for the MT services. I have come across postings of
Indian MT companies on international boards quoting about 4-5 cents
per line (even lower) for 98.5% accuracy and for TAT lesser than 12
hours, which only represents the sorry state of industry in India
both in terms of procuring business as well as performance. But
more ironic is the fact that when subcontracting comes to be with
another Indian company, the same people raise a question about the
feasibility of the rates at 4-5 cents per line. I would request Amit to highlight such deficits of the Indian MT
industry and to introduce a few more articles regarding
standardization of the units and the services provided by them in
order to educate the Indian entrepreneur to be worth consideration
on international boards. Hoping for a better Indian MT community! Happy Transcribing! Kshitij Kansal,
Elite Information and Consultancy Services Comment?
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