Ben Walker is the founder and CEO of Ditto Transcripts, the leading global provider of transcription services to the healthcare, legal, law enforcement, academic, financial, and general business industries. Born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, Ben attended Creighton Prep High School in Omaha and Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he earned his degree in Economics. After working as a loan officer for almost eight years, Ben entered the healthcare industry, co-founding a medical transcription company with three others. After recognizing the need for diversification in the face of significant changes in the healthcare industry due to adopting EHR/EMR, Ben founded Transcription Outsourcing. This new transcription company would serve various industries beyond healthcare. In July 2022, Ben rebranded the company to Ditto Transcripts to better convey the company’s story and human approach to transcription services.
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Can you start by giving our readers, who may have miss ed your previous interview with Valiant CEO, a brief introduction about yourself and your role as founder and CEO of Ditto Transcripts?
Ben Walker: After college I wanted to go into the real estate development industry and so I started with selling mortgages and learning the financial side of the industry. After eight years and a house flip I decided that real estate was not something I wanted to keep doing. Hearing about the healthcare industry and its long term prospects I started to look for sales jobs in the medical field. It was very difficult to get the interviews I wanted, so I ended up helping start a medical transcription company with three other partners. Ditto Transcripts came to be after I broke off from the parent company in order to diversify and offer a full service suite of transcription services. We now offer not only medical transcription services, but legal, law enforcement, financial, academic, and general transcription services to clients all over the US.
Can you give a brief overview of Ditto Transcripts and its offerings?
Ben Walker: Ditto Transcripts offers specialized legal, law enforcement, medical, financial, academic, and general transcription services to hundreds of clients all over the US. We have specialized teams that are highly trained and vetted in their respective fields before we ever have them transcribe real files for our clients. We also run criminal background checks on everyone who has access to our data, in order to maintain HIPAA, CJIS, and FINRA compliance.
Does Ditto Transcripts employ AI for any transcription services? Do you use it in other ways to optimize your business processes?
Ben Walker: We do not employ AI for any of our transcription services as it is not accurate enough for our purposes. Yes we do use AI for other parts of our business processes in our accounting, SEO, and a few other places for workflow management.
AI is being rapidly adopted across many industries, including for transcription services. Why should consumers and businesses consider foregoing AI for human-based transcripts?
Ben Walker: AI is not accurate enough for our clients at this time. AI transcripts are also not certified, which is a requirement for most of our clients. Our clients need and require 99% accurate transcripts, so for us we have to use humans who can hear and understand every little thing that they hear on the audio file. We also personally certify our transcripts and will testify in court to its accuracy and authenticity if needed.
What specific industries have you found to be most receptive to human-based transcription services (instead of leveraging AI), and why?
Ben Walker: This is a funny question because we have clients in all of the major industries we work with that refuse to allow AI to be a part of their process because of the accuracy issues associated with AI and voice recognition. Our clients are in the legal, law enforcement, medical, financial, academic, and general business industries and have all tried AI in the past. Who wouldn’t want to have their transcripts automated and done in a matter of seconds, I know I would too. The problem is the accuracy isn’t even close enough to be used in court or in any type of scenario that requires accurate data.
Can you discuss your approach to data security and confidentiality, and how it differs from AI-based transcription services?
Ben Walker: We run criminal background checks on everyone here who has access to our data. We have passwords on all of our systems, machines, and our office building has an alarm and security cameras in place. Our online portal is HIPAA, CJIS, and FINRA compliant and is also SOC2 compliant. AI-based transcription services are not all of these at the same time as us because they host data on servers all over the world and allow access by foreign nationals in some cases.
How do you balance the need for accuracy and the pressure for quick turnaround times in your service delivery?
Ben Walker: We have a team of transcriptionists for each specialty we work in and they move around their workload in order to get rush files completed on time. Our Operations Supervisors and transcriptionists work together when we get rush files in in order to make sure everything gets done on time and accurately. It is a balancing act they have become very good at, and our people are aware of the ripple effects of our work.
Looking ahead, how do you see the transcription industry evolving, and what role do you envision for human transcriptionists in that future?
Ben Walker: I think that eventually AI will become good enough for us to use in our processing of transcripts, which will actually help us grow and become an even bigger company. Once AI is accurate enough we will be able to do more work in less time, lower our prices, and provide much faster turnaround times. It looks like to me our human transcriptionists will become editors of the AI transcripts is my prediction.
According to the Ditto Transcripts website, your company serves various industries, like healthcare, legal and law enforcement. How do you tailor your solutions to meet the unique needs of these different sectors?
Ben Walker: Each transcription niche is served by our specially trained transcriptionists for that particular field. Our transcriptionists are specialized so that their accuracy is 99% or higher every single time and they do not have to learn new words and phrases all the time.
What advice would you give to other business leaders who are considering whether to adopt AI solutions or maintain human-centered services in their industries?
Ben Walker: It depends on their requirements for accuracy and accountability. Our requirements for accuracy and accountability are 99% and 100% respectively, so we have to use humans to provide our industry leading transcription services. If they can get away with 80% accuracy and not need someone to double check the work, I would say to go for it. It all depends on what they need it for, so this is a hard one to answer definitively.
Jerome Knyszewski, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Ben Walker for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Ben Walker or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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