Medical Transcription is an age old process. Medical procedures were recorded in written and pictorial form. Various mediums were used for this purpose. Sometimes cave walls were used and sometimes parchments. Originally you had these religious leaders who also served as scribes for important happening and acted sometimes even as medical scribes because some of them were learned in the art of herbal medicines. Some of course had assistants who acted as scribes and were supposed to be specialists in literature and language.
In fact about four decades ago you had medical secretaries who would take down medical analysis from physicians and process it manually in front of the physician. Then came in the electronic age and then the computer revolution. Both these made it possible for the one-time medical secretary not to sit in front of the physician and process medical cases. But it also meant other problems. Since most of these medical secretaries were not trained in the science of Medical Language they started having serious problems with processing cases of patients whose recorded voice output was of a bad quality, or if the physician was an ESL( English as Second Language ) physician or if the physician was speaking too fast or if the terminology used by the physician was a new one or any combination of these. Therefore these one-time Medical Secretaries started developing there medical vocabulary database, reasoning and interception and sound-clue deciphering skills merely through trial and error.
The journey was rough for them.
But they sustained and outlived the problems and developed into a group of language specialists. Initially they were called Medical Transcriptionists and as for now Medical Language Specialists or Editors.
In 1978 such self-made professionals got together in Modesto, California and formed the AAMT, the American Association of Medical Transcription. This revolutionized the whole industry. The AAMT was a regulatory body, which was involved in the Research and Development of Medical Transcription and gave this profession a recognition. It is a platform where medical transcriptionists can voice their thoughts, opinions and ideologies.
The Process
In its simplest form, the word transcription implies conversion of one form of data into another. In medical transcription, it is the conversion of digitized voice information into textual version, and then the editing of the processed text, with the use of high end softwares.