Feasibility Study of Speech Recognition Technologies for Operating within a Medical First Responder's Environment

This thesis was designed to address some of the issues facing the medical First Responder who is continually tasked with providing care within multi-national environments. Currently, there are no established billets or quota requirements at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center for Navy Corpsmen for the purposes of foreign language education prior to an overseas assignment or deployment. The primary Speech Recognition (SR) device used in this study was the Voice Response Translator (VRT). Navy Corpsmen and Army Medics were asked to evaluate the VRT's capabilities in assisting with non- English speaking patient assessments. Other SR assisted technologies available to overcome some of the burden of providing healthcare in a foreign language environment were also studied. The results of this feasibility study show that SR assisted technologies are a viable tool available for operation within a medical First Responder's environment.Naval Postgraduate School Monterey CA is the author of 'Feasibility Study of Speech Recognition Technologies for Operating within a Medical First Responder's Environment' with ISBN 9781423551201 and ISBN 1423551206.