You're sitting in front of a computer with your headphones on and your right foot on a pedal. You're listening to a doctor's medical report (patient's assessment, diagnosis, therapeutic procedures, etc.) recorded through a high-tech recorder and converted into an audio file in your computer. You encode the report making sure that you get every medical word loud and clear including the medications, with correct spelling and grammar. You play the audio file over and over again to catch up with the doctor's dictation to be sure that everything he said was encoded.

This is not just pure secretarial work but doing medical transcription. This work is as crucial as that of a nurse although the focus is more on converting the doctor's oral report into text. But nevertheless, a medical transcriptionist (MT) still plays an important role as his or her output becomes a vital document of every physician. Most hospitals in the U.S. require their all data to be in digital format hence, the need for medical transcription.

Medical transcription is no easy job as training and experience are required. You are paid well, too, as much as that of a nurse. Each year, approximately 230,000 medical transcriptionists get hired but their availability is dropping by ten percent yearly. The U.S. Department of Labor has projected the demand for MTs to reach $20 billion worldwide. This demand has actually led many companies in the health services sector to outsource their requirement for medical transcription. Thanks to this latest strategy in the American healthcare industry, developing countries in Asia are greatly benefiting. Research firm IDC revealed that the U.S. spent $2.3 billion in 2004 for medical transcription outsourcing services. It foresees the MT outsourcing market to increase to $4.2 billion in 2008.

Outsourcing transcription work proves to be more cost effective for most U.S. hospitals than utilizing in-house secretarial staff to transcribe dictations of physicians. Letting medical secretaries do the transcribing usually causes delays as they have a variety of tasks to do like answering phone calls and being a receptionist at the same time. Meanwhile, health firms that offer transcription service have more staff with a standard 3 to 1 ratio that can hasten turnaround time on dictated files.

Medical transcription is a growing industry in Asia, specifically in the countries of India and the Philippines. It is a well-known fact that medical transcription is a $10 billion industry in the U.S. But with a high demand and not enough manpower to fulfill the need, the MT work is being spread out to Asia where labor cost is cheaper. India is the first to take advantage of this business process outsourcing (BPO) strategy and medical transcription there is now considered the fourth biggest foreign exchange earner after garments, diamonds and software.

In the Philippines, medical transcription is also gaining ground. In fact, it is one of the government's top 10 priority growth sectors. Filipinos are seen to be very equipped in this field because of their high literacy rate, English proficiency, medical and computer training and improving infrastructure on information and technology. The Department of Trade and Industry has confirmed this demand and employment opportunities adding that quality should always be prioritized to maintain the country's credibility to its international employment partners.