Recommendations for Medical Use Options

[leeguice]

Ready to move into VR for my mediacal practice and would appreciate some recommendatios. New Dell P4 2.8GHz with WinXP Pro, 1Gig RAM, SB Live 5.1 all the service packs/patches are up to date,etc.

1. DNS Medical or DNS Prof with a Trigram addon for my specialty, Urology?

2. Local resellar who wants the suggested retail vs a web based bundle which will save $300-400? Is local support really needed?

3. Would be helpful, not necessary, to use a digital recorder... use one from the begining, add later, avoid?

4. A hand held recording microphone/mouse would be nice... and I do not want to degrade the accuracy. My dicattion spot gets intermittent bursts of street noise. Should I use a headset or go with a handheld?

This is a great forum and it has lead me to take the plunge. THANKS IN ADVANCE.

[Tudordoc]

I am an Orthopaedic Surgeon and have used DNS for several years. I currently use DNS 7 Preferred on a TAblet PC 900Hz with 512RAM. This works ok so what you have should be blisteringly fast (or shoud I say your flow rate will be great?)
I have previously used Philips SPeechmike but it is not USB so does not plug into the Tablet. I have just bought a Olympus digital recorder.

My advice would therefore be as follows.

If you intend to train and continue to correct your own work, you do not need Professional. If you ever consider saving the voice files with the intent of giving the text to your secretary to tidy up, then I would get Professional. I wish I had bought Professional originally as it is cheap to upgrade to Preferred but I would have to buy Professional full price should I want to change.

I liked using the Philips speechmike and am soon to get a USB version. The headset is useful for handling notes with both hands while recording. Get a Andrea noise cancelling headset for best results.

I am very disappointed with the results of the digital recorder and am not sure it is persisting with.

[John Wickett]

leeguice,

One of my sons, an emerg doc, uses DNS Professional. He tried using a digital recorder but the results and necessary editing have convinced him that it is not worth it. He now dictates directly into his laptop using an Andrea ANC 700. The recorder was nice because he is on the move so much but it was just too unreliable as the noise in an emerg area can be overwhelming.

Of course his DNS trainer, yours truly, told him that in the beginning but he had to see for himself. He has still asserted his independance by not purchasing the laptop I recommended! ;-)

John

[Daniel Ginsberg]

I am an internist using Dragon 7.0 Medical Edition. Someone commented that you may not need the Professional version. I use the scripting function a lot, which is not available in the Preferred edition. I use it to better automate using my electronic medical record. It takes some time to learn how to use it, but at least for me, it's worthwhile.

I have been using the Andrea ANC-700 with a USB adaptor at work. I also just bought a VXI TalkPro USB for home, which works well. You should get a microphone that has active noise cancellation.

You probably need a general medical vocabulary, and not just the urology vocabulary, as you presumably will be dictating past medical history, etc. Although you can add any word on her own, it's not worth your time to have to enter hundreds of words if you can buy them.

[DAS]

Originally posted by leeguice:
Ready to move into VR for my mediacal practice and would appreciate some recommendatios. New Dell P4 2.8GHz with WinXP Pro, 1Gig RAM, SB Live 5.1 all the service packs/patches are up to date,etc.

Sounds like your system is fine. I prefer a Gig of RAM. What are you going to dictate into? I use MS Word with some custom templates.

If using Word, I would add the Stedman Medical dictionary.

1. DNS Medical or DNS Prof with a Trigram addon for my specialty, Urology?

If you are serious, I would got with the Professional version, mainly for the macro/scripting capabilities.

The Professional version has a very large medical vocabulary in it.

If you have a good supply of previous dictation, you can use vocbldr.exe to scan them and add your customs words.

I have several years of documents that I used to create my custom word list. When I upgraded to the Medical Version, I did not see a significant change.

2. Local reseller who wants the suggested retail vs a web based bundle which will save $300-400?  Is local support really needed?

I would definitely buy from a VAR, they provide excellent support.

If you are a techie and can handle most PC related problems, then probably no need to use local support. If you need help with the PC etc., I would go local.

3. Would be helpful, not necessary, to use a digital recorder... use one from the begining, add later, avoid?

Definitely not a good place to start. Generally the success for a complicated dictation is not great. Would avoid, at least until you have the PC based dictations going.

4. A hand held recording microphone/mouse would be nice... and I do not want to degrade the accuracy.  My dicattion spot gets intermittent bursts of street noise. Should I use a headset or go with a handheld?

I use a Philips SpeechMike with great success. I have really gotten used to the buttons. I use the sound card version on my office PC and the USB version on my Laptop. One advantage to using the USB version, is that you can transfer User Files to different machines. With DNS 7.2, I have found that I can transfer my User files from the PC to laptop without any problems in recognition.

This is a great forum and it has lead me to take the plunge.  THANKS IN ADVANCE.

Good luck, you will find a great deal of help here and on the other forums.

A word of caution, the transition can be frustrating. You will have to do much more editing and formating. I still believe that it is faster (and at time may be more cost effective) to use a transcription service, but I enjoy the Speech Recognition and it has many benefits.



[This message has been edited by DAS (edited 09-25-2003).]

[John Wickett]

leeguice,

>I have several years of documents that I used to create my custom word list. When I upgraded to the Medical Version, I did not see a significant change.

DAS is right on target with this. If you have documents stored electronically then just convert them to .txt format and let DNS "read" them. It will not only add the necessary words to your vocabulary but it will learn the context in which you use them - the medical version just adds the words. Since we all verbalize differently, sometimes the context is more important than the word itself.

What must be reassuring is that you are receiving relatively the same advice from all your postings, so you are on the right track.

John