Voice apps spreading as standards mature

Voice technology is making its way into more mainstream uses thanks to standards-based technologies displacing expensive, proprietary platforms.

One of those applications is Rex, a disposable prescription bottle with embedded text-to-speech technology that can read medication details in a computer-generated voice at the push of a button. Tony Mariano, co-founder of MedivoxRx Technologies, came up with the idea for Rex when a visually impaired friend wound up in the hospital after mistakenly taking the wrong medicine.

Mariano is among those scheduled to speak at this week's SpeechTek conference in New York. The semiannual SpeechTek trade show focuses on products and services based on voice technologies. About 3,000 attendees and 106 exhibitors are expected at the show, according to event organizers.

SpeechTek organizers developed conference tracks for key industries, including financial services, healthcare, insurance, government and utilities.

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Voice technology is making its way into more mainstream uses thanks to standards-based technologies displacing expensive, proprietary platforms.

One of those applications is Rex, a disposable prescription bottle with embedded text-to-speech technology that can read medication details in a computer-generated voice at the push of a button. Tony Mariano, co-founder of MedivoxRx Technologies, came up with the idea for Rex when a visually impaired friend wound up in the hospital after mistakenly taking the wrong medicine.

Mariano is among those scheduled to speak at this week's SpeechTek conference in New York. The semiannual SpeechTek trade show focuses on products and services based on voice technologies. About 3,000 attendees and 106 exhibitors are expected at the show, according to event organizers.

SpeechTek organizers developed conference tracks for key industries, including financial services, healthcare, insurance, government and utilities.

Speech vendors, too, have honed their wares for individual market sectors to improve adoption. Edify is launching an auto-attendant application for banks that automates typical customer requests such as changing a PIN and transferring funds.

Similarly, VoiceGenie Technologies will debut a suite of speech applications for utility companies. Its NXP Utilities Suite includes an automated meter-reporting system that lets subscribers phone in their service meter readings, and an emergency notification system that lets utility companies automatically deliver outbound calls to customers via a telephony or Web interface.

The trend to develop speech wares geared for specific vertical markets is a sign that the industry is maturing, says Daniel Hong, voice business analyst at Datamonitor. After gaining experience with general speech technologies, such as auto-attendant applications, vendors now are working to translate their expertise into vertical-specific products, Hong says.

But there's still a lot of work to do. "In general, market awareness of speech is poor," Hong says. Up to 40% of the largest U.S. companies still have only one speech application deployed, he says. Smaller companies have little to no knowledge of speech technologies.

That's slowly changing. Improved IT spending among business is driving interest in voice technology deployments, Hong says. In addition, the advent of standards such as VoiceXML, and to a lesser extent the Microsoft-based Speech Application Language Tags specification, have freed companies from getting locked into expensive, proprietary speech platforms and custom-developed applications. "Across the board, pricing has declined," Hong says.