Temporarily (likely until early September 2011) there are at least 5 versions of Dragon Medical software for North American English.
Dragon Medical Practice Edition (not called Release 11... but effectively it is Release 11 if you count releases)
Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition 10.1
Dragon Medical Enterprise (10.1)
Dragon Medical (10.1)
Dragon Medical Small Practice (10.1)
In the recent past, Dragon Medical Enterprise, Dragon Medical and Dragon Medical Small Practice have been delivered with multiple packaging, license, and maintenance options. Costs of these products run $1150-$1600/license in most cases so these were all comparable products. Sale of these products will probably end in September 2011 with the exception of existing inventory carried by some dealers.
In some medical applications, use of Dragon NaturallySpeaking can be appropriate. These are typically non-clinical applications as may be encountered in research, patient communications, insurance, etc.
This is to be released in September 2011. For practices of 24 or fewer doctors, it is the follow-on to either Dragon Medical Enterprise, Dragon Medical, and Dragon Medical Small Practice. So the purchase decision is easier for most of you, there are fewer products to choose!
Read on if you have an immediate need, as for some of you waiting 2-4 weeks may not be worthwhile. Or if you'd like a "close-out" bargain, then buying a Release 10 product plus an upgrade to Dragon Medical Practice Edition may save a few dollars.
We have little information on Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition. It is for hospitals and practices with 25+ physicians. Rumored cost is approximately $2200/person plus a $10,000 server. So far as we know, it is still based on Dragon 10.1 technology, we presume Nuance will update it soon.
Aside from licensing, it is functionally the same as Dragon Medical. Existing users can upgrade to Dragon Medical Practice Edition if in practices of fewer than 25 doctors.
Sometimes called "boxed" product or "full Medical," sometimes bundled with a microphone. Dragon Medical 10 is intended for Independent Practices with 24 or fewer Physicians and is not for sale to hospitals or to practices with 25 or more Physicians. It is still for sale for those needing a solution late August/early September 2011 and may be appropriate for groups of 6-24 physicians who are deploying EMR's very soon.
This is a subset of Dragon Medical suitable for some small practices. It is only sold by Certified resellers (VAR's). We are one of those resellers.
There are restrictions. It does not include pathology or radiology language models so is inappropriate for those specialties. Dragon Medical Small practice is only to be sold to independent practices with 5 or fewer physicians.
It lacks a few features. Key are features for "next field" and the "hidden" Dictation Box.
It is about $400 less expensive than Dragon Medical 10! For a few practices buying in late August/early September, a smart economic move will be to buy Dragon Medical Small Practice plus an upgrade to Dragon Medical Practice Edition.
Historically, some doctors have used the non-medical versions of Dragon since its inception in 1997. I've got customers that started then who still use Dragon Professional. So those products can be used for medical dictation. BUT--these doctors paid their dues, learned to have word lists, learned to quickly do vocabulary analysis upon new releases, and have learned the Dragon means of dictation.
Starting with Release 10 (August 2008), dictation with the non-Medical versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking fails when dictating into many EMR's. Even if an EMR that you use for dictation works with Release 10 there is no guarantee that it will work when updates to Release 10 occur.
If using an EMR with these restrictions, then your choice will be Dragon Medical Practice Edition.
If you do not use an EMR and do not plan to be using an EMR, then you can do further analysis. Is your writing “medical” in style and vocabulary?
Dragon Medical 10 includes multiple different medical vocabularies. While 70+ specialties are listed, these are mapped into approximately 15 different vocabularies. These include named vocabularies for radiology, pathology, cardiology, emergency medicine, ObGyn, General Medicine, general practice, neurology, oncology, pediatrics, gastroenterology, orthopedics, and mental health. Many other specialties (e.g. dentistry, dermatology, urology, etc.) have vocabulary included within these vocabularies. To see if your specialty is included, please visit Nuance's list here
For Release 9 users, a Nuance Tech Note for Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 documents the supported specialties (search the Tech Notes for "urology" to find this note) and the recommended vocabulary for Release 9. Normally we suggest using these language models instead of those supplied by third-party vendors. There are a few specialties where third-party vocabularies were appropriate, but the restrictions introduced in Release 10 on using Professional/Preferred with EMR's make those vocabularies less desireable.
Are you part of a large organization? If so, we can help you create custom vocabularies that can be distributed to other users of the Medical products. Alternately, contact us regarding other development methodologies whereby we can create custom commands that can be used with ANY version of NaturallySpeaking or with Dragon Medical.
If you do data collection, then there can be outstanding benefits of using Dragon Medical or Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional to expedite the recording of your data. Dictating directly into spreadsheets, or dictating data into a recorder then playing it back to be processed into spreadsheets, tables, or other organized and regular formats may take a while to set up, but can save huge amounts of time.
Simple data collection using Excel can be done using the Preferred Edition, particularly if you are willing to use the keyboard to navigate between spreadsheet cells.
topOnce a competitor to Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the IBM ViaVoice product is essentially defunct.
Microsoft has speech recognition included with Office-XP, Office-2003, Windows Vista and Windows 7.
With Windows 7, many report good accuracy for ordinary prose. Some aspects of the program, such as web surfing, are very good. But the user interface lacks the refinement of NaturallySpeaking. Without a medical vocabulary, accuracy for clinical work is poor. Specialized vocabulary is available from at least one vendor, but in the last 2 years I've not seen a single doctor publically praise it.
Since this is "free" software, some use it to experiment and learn. For clinical reporting, it should still be considered experimental.
Philips has continuous speech technology but most often works with high-end software/hardware suppliers to embed their technology into other products. These are mainly aimed at speeding up the transcription process where one person dictates and another person reviews/edits/corrects the document.
We're also happy to discuss your needs with you to help ensure you get the products and accessories best suited for your particular needs.
If you are ready to purchase, Dragon Medical is available through our online store.