TDS Feedback Tones

Summary

The InfraWare Telephone Dictation System (TDS) offers the option to play feedback tones to authors while they dictate to give them assurance that recording is taking place.  (This can help reduce the likelihood of a physician continuing to dictate when they have the TDS paused or have been disconnected.)

Solution

This setting is on a per-author basis and is configure on the Author Settings screen in the InfraWare Management Console (IMC).  Under Administration, go to Users, select an Author, go to Author Settings, then TDS Authorizations.  There are 5 options for this setting:

The "Standard Tone" is a soft volume; whereas the Loud Tone is more prominent.  You can also choose how often the tone should occur, every 5 seconds or every 10 seconds.  Two wav files are attached to this article.  One represents the standard volume of the tone, and the other represents the loud volume.  (In the attached files, the tones play continuously, but in the TDS they will play at the 5 or 10 second interval.)

Speaker phones

A Word about Speaker phones - This feature will not produce desirable results with inexpensive (half duplex) speaker phones.  The problem with these phones is that they mute the microphone (used for dictation) when the speaker is playing.  It follows that the telephone's microphone will not send audio to the phone company and InfraWare in the moments while the feedback tones are being played.