UK Police Trial Paperless Forms

London, April 13, 2004 - Police forces in England will have their first chance to try out an innovative product that promises to "banish paperwork" from the working lives of active police officers, at the ACPO 2004 conference. WinScribe Europe officially launched its VoiceForms product for the English market at the conference. The new system allows officers in the field to complete forms-based paperwork quickly and accurately by speaking the information into an interactive computer system for transcription by trained operators, even whilst in the field.

The first system of its kind anywhere in the world, WinScribe VoiceForms has been a runaway success in Scotland, with six of the eight local forces already ordering systems since it was introduced there in November. Now available in England, VoiceForms has been developed by WinScribe, the world's leading specialist in digital dictation systems, widely used by doctors and lawyers to increase efficiency.

Police officers call VoiceForms from a mobile phone whilst at an incident, on Airwaves (the new digital police radio system) or from their desk telephone. The system allows the caller to select the form type (Eg theft of a motor vehicle) and then leads them through the appropriate questions, waiting for spoken answers.

The system automatically date and time stamps the form and can cope with complex forms, including "conditional branches" - asking new questions depending on previous answers. For example it can loop through 3 sets of witness questions if there are 3 witnesses.

Creation of a VoiceForm is designed to be simple with the built-in form creator . The form designer can see, at a glance, the tree structure of the form and review the voice prompts for each stage.

The recordings are then queued for transcription, which is completed by a skilled police administrator. The queued jobs can be sent anywhere by VoiceForms - to the local transcriptionists or to remote workers providing out-of-hours cover. When the administrator opens the job the correct form can be presented on-screen ready for filling, and any details that the officer has keyed on the phone are autofilled (such as registered number).

"The beauty of the system is twofold," explained Philip Vian, Managing Director of WinScribe Europe. "Foremost is the convenience for the police officer who no longer needs to spend time filling out paperwork. VoiceForms can be completed whilst at a scene or on the move, freeing officers from onerous desk-based paperwork. The other real advantage of our system is its flexibility: queued jobs can be handled locally or sent to transcriptionists anywhere in the country - allowing for overflow or shared out-of-hours support."

An additional feature of VoiceForms is "Audiotext", a system designed to provide telephone information for the public. Using the keypad menu system built into VoiceForms, a conditional information system can easily be built. Callers to the system can use their telephone keypad to navigate the menus to obtain the information they seek.