General product information

Version 9 of Dragon Naturally Speaking is a huge improvement over previous versions. Coupled with 2GB of RAM, it spits out complex medical terms with remarkable speed and accuracy. Since Dragon is licensed by user, not by device, there is great flexibility in its deployment. At least one customer is experimenting with using roaming profiles so that the doc's can dictate in the exam room with in the presence of the patient. Using the built in templating features of Dragon can be a nice compliment to using text templates. This allows more granular personalization without adding clutter to the EHR. One customer, who was not intending to use Dragon a large scale, saw the demand for it spread like wildfire. After individual doc's started purchasing it on their own, the IS department realized that they needed to roll it out enterprise wide. Now the vast majority of doc's are using it as a full replacement for dictation and transcription costs have been nearly eliminated.

One area where Dragon does not perform well is in sections of the note that require the inclusion of people's names. In this rare circumstances, traditional dictation works best.

Of course not all note sections are well suited for Dragon. In areas where capturing discrete data is desired, the use of Medcin templates would be required.

Dragon as a prelude to EHR adoption

Dragon can be used as an effective way to begin and EHR deployment by allowing the physicians to get an early taste of success.

6-8 weeks prior to going live with the EHR, the doc's are provided with a Philips Speech Mike and Dragon. In one small practice, all 5 physicians were using Dragon for all of their dictations within a week.