Smartype

Speedtyping Software

Getting Started

1. See how it works

After downloading and installing the software, bring up a Word document or any Windows or Web-based application that will accept text. Type “The patient underwent examination of the right abdomen” slowly, to understand how Smartype’s frequency-oriented word completion will save you keystrokes. As soon as you see each desired word appear in the SmartList, just hit the spacebar. If you do this right, you will be able to get these 47 black characters and 7 spaces with just t-space, p-space, un-space, e-space, of-space, t-space, r-space, and abd-space. That’s only 12 letter keys and 7 spaces. When you try some other sentences, they might not be quite so impressive, but you’ll still appreciate the substantial keystroke savings. Naturally, you don’t want to transcribe at this slow speed forever. However, if you spend your first few Smartyping days at this careful pace, closely watching the top line of the SmartList and then hitting space when your word appears at the top, you will automatically be committing to memory the shortest abbreviation for all the words you commonly type. Then you won’t need to always watch the displayed words anymore…or even to think. You’ll hear “examination”, and your fingers will just hit e-space. That’s when your speed and productivity will start to reach unparalleled heights. Note that if you ever want to make a displayed SmartList disappear in order to temporarily deactivate word completion, just hit Escape. Also, you can select any word on a SmartList by hitting the number or double-clicking. If you need to put an actual number in the text, just hit Escape first.

2. Check out abbreviation expansion

Type “atcotcase”. When you hit space, you will get “at the conclusion of the case”. In fact, it will come up after you hit just 3 keystrokes. This expansion is from the Expansion List that is shipped with Smartype. It takes the phrases from MT Daily, but it uses a different formula: the first letter of each word -- except for the last word, which has the first 4 letters. You will rarely need to type the entire shorthand. Your desired entry will typically appear on the top of the SmartList after typing just a few characters. If this works for you, that’s great. But if you have your own set of abbreviations, you will most likely want to use those. We’ll show you how in the next section. However, if you’d like to take a look at the expansions that are shipped with Smartype, go to your system tray, lower right, and bring up the icons. There will be an S icon near the bottom. It’s white on a red-circle background when Smartype is active; the background turns to black when inactive. If you left-click it, you will toggle it off. Left-clicking again will toggle it back on. If you right-click it, you bring up the menu of Smartype controls. Rest the cursor on Library Management and then left-click Shorthand Library Manager. Click the Open Library tab and then select Smartype Expansions.slb. You can now review the list.

3. Import your shorthands/expansions

If you have a list with both the shorthands and the expansions, format them into a plain text file so that each line contains a single shorthand followed by the corresponding expansion. The shorthand and the full spelling can be separated by space, tab, comma, semicolon, or the = symbol. (Example: rom=range of motion). Then you right-click the Smartype icon, rest your cursor on Import and select Create Shorthand Library from Shorthand List File. Browse to your shorthand/expansion file. Then give your list a name under Target Library. Click Delimiter, select one of the offering, or put an = sign in the Others box. After creating your own Shorthand Library, you can activate just the Vocabularies and abbreviations you want, via Library Management, Set Active Libraries; then highlighting them under Professional Libraries and Shorthand Libraries. Click to remove the highlighting of any Vocabularies or Shorthand Lists you don’t want to have active. Keep Smartype Editing Macros. They are described in a section below.

4. Review the setup options

You should now take a look at the options available to you. Right-click the Smartype icon in the system tray; then left-click Options. By reviewing the different pages, you’ll experience all the customizing you can do with Smartype. You can return to these screens later. However, it’s important to take note of one particular capability. Smartype can automatically learn the words you type that are not currently in its Vocabulary, such as doctor’s names, hospitals, and geographical locations. By default, this AutoLearn capability is turned off. You can turn it on at any point, if you wish. This might make sense if you type lots of proper nouns that aren’t in the standard Vocabulary. But be careful. You don’t want it learning typos. If you see anything in a SmartList that looks like a misspelling, just delete it as described below. Also below, you will see how easy it is to selectively add a word or phrase to the Vocabulary.

5. Take Smartype for a test drive.

Now it’s time to take Smartype for a test drive. Just start transcribing any old dictation. Or you can do a new one. Get a feel for it. That will enable you to later customize the software in the ways that will be most responsive to your needs and transcribing style. If you ever want to turn Smartype off, just left-click the Smartype icon. Then to toggle it back on, left-click again. It will work in most or all of the Windows and Web programs you use. Note that you select a word or phrase by typing the punctuation. But if you type the space first to select the word and then want to add the punctuation, Smartype will autobackspace. Also remember that to make Smartype be all that it can be for you, you will need to slow down for a while. This way you can watch the SmartList, and slowly but steadily commit the optimal word and shorthand abbreviations to memory. After using Smartype for a few months, you might find that it’s even faster than editing the drafts produced by back-end speech recognition engines. Wouldn’t that be a kick?!

6. Customize your Vocabulary

You can add, delete, and rearrange entries in the Vocabulary and Expansion List. Do Ctrl+Alt+j after typing a word or phrase you’d like to add. Highlight the entry you’d like to add. It defaults to the Target Library of the last addition. If this is not the one you want, just click the down arrow to change the Target. Hit Enter or click OK to effect the addition. It is advisable to add your words to the User Lib. That way, they will still be retained if you ever want to install a new, updated Medical Vocabulary. To delete or rearrange, right-click the entry when it appears in the SmartList. Then you can left-click Delete Entry or Move Word to Top. You can also determine exactly what keystrokes will bring to the top any word you want to type with fewer characters than it currently requires. Just click Tools, Edit Top Words. Then put one or more letters in Prefix; type the whole word in Word. Click Set and OK. If you have access to your transcribed reports as a text file, you can totally customize your entire Vocabulary for the types of reports that you transcribe, thereby saving you the maximum number of keystrokes. If you’re interested in doing this, let us know. We’ll send you the instructions for making it happen. Email info@smartype.com. Also, please note that there is further information about the capabilities of Smartype in the Help section, accessible by right-clicking the icon and resting your cursor on Help. Then click Contents.

Smartype’s Special Abbreviations

Smartype comes complete with a Vocabulary of medical words. But in addition, there is a medical-phrase-expansion list as well as a helpful set of editing macros.

Editing Macros

Right click on the Smartype icon to bring up the menu > go to Library Management > Shorthand Library Manager > Open Library > Smartype Editing Macros and click Open. Here you will see the list of macros available. Click on Add, and we will show you how to add one additional macro, a macro to append “-like” to the end of a word. In the Shorthand box at the top type kk (or chose another key combination, if you prefer). Tab down to the Full large text box and type in \bk-like. This will back space and add your ending. Before clicking OK, take a look at the lower part of the screen where you see the Insert Special Symbol box with a down arrow beside it. Click the down arrow, and you will see the list of macros available for you to use and what their function is. Now click OK to return to the Shorthand Library Manager box. You should see your new kk macro listed, and this is where you edit any of the macros if you wish. Click Save or Done to save anything you have changed and exit.

Here are the predefined Smartype macros and what they do:

dd backspace and delete 1 character

gg backspace and add ing to the end of the word

kk backspace and add -like to the word

pp backspace and add 's to the end of the word

ss backspace and add s to the word

tt backspace and add -type to the end of the word

dh hard/nonbreaking hyphen

ds hard/nonbreaking space

Medical Shorthands

This includes over 5,500 phrases and short forms using Smartype's default phrase-generation rule, which is the first letter of each word and the first 4 letters of the last word. This is the formula Smartype will use when you add a phrase while transcribing. Smartype will suggest the shorthand for your phrase based on this rule, and you can accept that abbreviation or make up your own. The Smartype Medical Shorthands List has already done all of this work for you. For example: acpain will expand to "atypical chest pain" (although once you have typed acp the phrase will already appear).

Also included are many of the "year-old" phrases, for example 12 yof expands to 12-year-old female.

Some common abbreviations that do not fit into the Smartype formula are included in the Medical Shorthands List, such as dx/dxd/dxs for diagnosis/diagnosed/diagnoses and tx/txd/txg/txs for treat/treated/treating/treatments as well as fx=fracture, hzn=hospitalization, bx=biopsy, and so on. If you are used to rrr=regular rate and rhythm, it is already there. As you keep an eye on the SmartList, you will notice many phrases you can use right away.

Misspellings: Corrections to common misspellings are available for those times when your fingers get twisted around, for example: agian=again, alright=all right, onblock=en bloc, judgement=judgment, tosis=ptosis, and many more. Add your own whenever you catch yourself having to backspace and fix the word.

Of course, you can choose to have either of these libraries active or inactive depending on what works best for you. Also, you can import your existing Expansion List, activating it instead of, or in addition to, the one that ships with Smartype.

Smartype is a registered trademark of Narratek, Inc. IntelliComplete is a registered trademark of FlashPeak, Inc.