This blog is part of a series on transcription. If you haven’t read the other blogs in this series, make sure to check out the summary page for a listing of all transcription blogs.
Instant Text is the most powerful expander on the market. Comparing AutoCorrect to Instant Text is like comparing a baby kitten to a large powerful tiger–yeah sure they’re related, but they’re not exactly kissing cousins.
That difference also shows up in the price tag: Free vs $189. If you pay $189 for something, it better do everything but the dinner dishes, and luckily, Instant Text does pretty much that.
I already discussed adding a phrase into AutoCorrect: “Hava” becoming “Hava is the best blogger in the whole world.” What if you actually wanted “Hava” to stand for “Have a ventricular artery” instead? (Okay, that’s really awkward phrasing, but you get my point.) Instant Text allows you to put multiple meanings in for the same set of letters, and allows you to select which meaning you are wanting as you type. “tp” can stand for “toilet paper” or “the patient” or “total privacy”–whatever you want it to. The suggestions for what you are typing appear at the bottom of the page as you type, and you can select to have anywhere from no options at all appear (have Instant Text nowhere on the screen) to having 10 options appear. You don’t want too little option choices, but you also don’t want too many, because it will get unwieldy if it gets too large.
There is also the fact that “pe” can stand for “physical examination” like a doctor would say as they talked (the physical examination went well) or “PHYSICAL EXAMINATION:” as would be used for a heading. This kind of flexibility can really help a transcriptionist out, because only being able to expand out one way or the other as you would with AutoCorrect can really limit the usability.
The truly awesome feature that sold me on Instant Text was when I found out that I could take doctor’s reports and have IT scan it and compile a list of commonly used phrases and words by a doctor from these documents. If you get a new doctor and are given old reports by him so you can refer back to them if you are stumped on what the doctor is saying, you can have IT scan these reports and set up glossaries for this particular doctor, saving you hours of adding each item yourself. You can set up as many glossaries as you want (one per doctor or one per specialty that you transcribe, etc) or you can just stick to one large glossary. Glossaries can be combined for one session and then pulled back apart at the end of a session, or they can be permanently combined together into one glossary if that’s what you want.
I bought Instant Text, and because it has so many features, I got overwhelmed by it and sat staring at my computer. How do I make this thing do what I want it to? So I called Instant Text’s support line and talked to a very nice lady who walked me through what I needed to know. I was pleasantly surprised at how nice and friendly this tech support was, and how incredibly intelligent she was also. I could tell she had learned what she was telling me through hands-on experience, not because of something she read out of a book. Such a difference from other tech support lines I’ve called.
I can hear it now: You want something nicer than AutoCorrect but not as expensive as Instant Text. Solution? Shorthand. Read on!