Dragon Medical Practice Edition (DMPE) is specialised healthcare speech recognition software that has been helping medical professionals create accurate and time-efficient documentation for many years.

This version is locally installed, with processing occurring on the local PC. It has an in-built medical vocabulary and compatibility with various electronic patient record systems, so it’s easy to see why it has been so popular amongst the NHS and beyond.

However, since the release of Nuance’s Dragon Medical One (DMO), the new cloud-based, subscription speech recognition model, there really is no comparison between the two and healthcare professionals have been drawn to the possibilities of this newer version.

This brings us to the story of Professor Roger Atkins of RA Medical Ltd, a medicolegal report specialist based in Bristol. The practice has three employees and processes approximately 150 new reports a year.

Roger purchased Dragon Medical Practice Edition 3 from us many years ago and has been using both version 3 and version 4 for five years in total.

“My experience was that it had been a complete revolution in my practice, significantly improving my efficiency.” – Roger Atkins – RA Medical Ltd

With Dragon already being an integral part of his organisation and through experiencing the benefits of medical speech recognition, Roger got in touch and expressed his interest in the Dragon Medical upgrade:

“The team and I were of the opinion that a cloud-based system [DMO] would be more user-friendly and efficient.” – Roger Atkins, RA Medical Ltd

Making The Swap

Thanks to being covered by VoicePower’s technical support contract, Roger was supported through every step of the Dragon Medical upgrade.

VoicePower carried out the routine IT check to make certain that Roger’s IT set-up was suitable for Dragon Medical One. The next step was the swap itself, VoicePower supplied his new licence and assisted with the installation and that’s it, Roger was now ready to begin using his new Dragon!

Speaking of the assistance provided by VoicePower, Roger stated:

“The swap was seamless and VoicePower’s support throughout was very good.” – Roger Atkins, RA Medical Ltd.

New and Improved Efficiency

Having used Dragon Medical One for approximately three months now, we wanted to check in and see how he was getting on since the upgrade and to our pleasure, Roger confirmed:

“An online system like this was always likely to be more user friendly and efficient however DMO is significantly more accurate and quicker.” – Roger Atkins, RA Medical Ltd

Speaking on his predictions before the swap, Roger explained that his main concern with the Dragon Medical upgrade was how it would perform away from the office, for example when used as a passenger in a car or at meetings.

Roger has since had the opportunity to put his ideas to the test and was pleased to say: “I have used it in a car, and it works very well with a 4G dongle, only cutting out rarely and very briefly.”

Summarising his whole experience, Roger says:

“I use it for dictation, and it significantly improves my efficiency, the accuracy is my favourite aspect of the technology.” – Roger Atkins, RA Medical Ltd