This invention relates to a unitary hand held medical prescription transcriber
and printing unit. More specifically, a small, portable electronic device is provided
which can record words spoken by a physician and from those words generate a printed
medical prescription that is delivered directly from the device itself. The unit
digitizes words spoken by the user, processes the speech to recognize the words
spoken by comparing the acoustic spectral characteristics of the spoken words to
the characteristics of a database of known words, formats those words in the form
of a prescription, and prints the prescription onto paper using a small integral
printer contained in the unit. In a alternate embodiment, the unit may display
the prescription on a liquid crystal display screen and the user may edit the prescription
before printing a hard copy. The unit assists in accurate dispensing of medicines
by providing a legible prescription printout, while at the same time being neither
time consuming nor difficult to operate.
