Why Transcription is an Essential Service During COVID

One of the biggest disruptions has been how we work, due to the changes necessitated by the threat of COVID-19.

As workplaces went dark during lockdowns around the country, the people who rode the lifts up and down to their floors in multi-storey buildings, shared snippets of news around the water cooler and tapped on computer keyboards were stood down or moved their work to home offices and kitchen tables.

With workforces now spread geographically, rather than concentrated in central locations, communication between colleagues, teams and clients has become vital. Web conferencing has grown by 87 per cent, according to ZoomInfo, with Zoom adoption grow at the mind-boggling rate of 418 per cent in two months at the beginning of the pandemic.

Months into working from home, we might have mastered how to use Zoom (including turning off mute so everyone can hear us speak), but who is keeping track of what is said in all these meetings? Confusion reigned at the beginning of the pandemic. Many businesses were unsure if they would be able to see months of reduced operation through. In this state of uncertainty staff were stood down, with many operations starting at the front desk on receptionists and secretaries and working their way backwards to more senior staff.

This surge in web meetings and conferencing has put transcription services  firmly in the camp of essential services. Online transcription services ensure an accurate record of meetings held between teams, committee members and consultants within a short time frame, but such services are also useful for the many other types of web conferencing that have become part of the new normal this year, including telehealth services.

Medical transcription has always been an important part of our services at TTP, with our transcriptionists already trained in medical terms, but demand for this service is growing simply because the COVID-19 pandemic has presented a health crisis in many quarters.

Medical teams at hospitals, clinics and surgeries, coupled with allied health services and medical research facilities, have had coronavirus activity added as a priority to their already full workload. Their numbers have been bolstered by people answering the call to return to medical professions and medical and nursing students gaining work experience during the pandemic as additional staff, but accurate records still need to be kept and we have been transcribing those important meetings to ensure better workflow.