Also known as voice recognition technology, ASR allows a person to converse with computers using normal speech and be reasonably understood and receive a response. That response might be an answer to a question, a correct prompt or by transcribing the user’s speech into readable text in real time.
ASR is made possible through natural language processing (the capability of computers to understand human language) and is used every day in the form of Google’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, for example. ASR is also used in simpler formats called directed dialogue, the best example being automated phone trees for customer service needs of banking, airlines, health care and other sectors.
ASR has a lot of potential in health care. It could be used for remote patient monitoring, for instance, or to conduct pre-appointment information gathering.