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Dragon Medical 10 was released this week. I understand that there have been some concerns regarding Nuance's efforts to encourage physicians to utilize the medical version as opposed to other versions. You may be interested in a White Paper that they have published on the subject: http://www.speechrecognition.com/medical_accuracy.pdf
If you have decided that you are interested in acquiring Dragon Medical, there are 3 editions: Dragon Medical Small Practice, Dragon Medical and Dragon Medical Enterprise. We have scripted a brief questionnaire to assist you with your selection: http://www.speechrecognition.com/dragon_medical/ and there are other resources which delineate the differences between various editions such as http://www.1450.com/dns10/pdfs/ds_DNS10_Medical.pdf
You are probably aware that the Dragon Medical Reseller channel is providing significant discounts during the month of September, both to new purchasers of Dragon Medical as well as for physicians who are upgrading. Filling out the form at this location will allow us to introduce you to a suitable Dragon Medical Partner: http://www.1450.com/spe .
Yours,
Eric Fishman, MDPresident,1450, Inc.
Eric Fishman: Dragon Medical 10 was released this week. I understand that there have been some concerns regarding Nuance's efforts to encourage physicians to utilize the medical version as opposed to other versions. You may be interested in a White Paper that they have published on the subject: http://www.speechrecognition.com/medical_accuracy.pdf
I just read the white paper and i tested the Trigram internal medicine language model using the words that a user should expect to have misrecognitions and got the same high accurcacy as advertised in the white paper for Dragon medical.
What does that say Dr. Fishman?
Nuance fails to realize many physicians only need the ability to "point and shoot".....they just need to be able to dictate medical terminology.
They do not need the additional "fluff" that is included in Dragon Medical.
Medical users can accomplish the ability to dictate with either Dragon Preferred or Professional by:
1. Buying a third party medical vocabulary.
2. training your user files with sample dictation, added words and Dragon vocabulary tools.
Dragon has the ability to customize the vocabulary, but, now want's to limit medical users ability to do this in any version but Dragon medical by blocking the ability to dictate into an EMR.
If the results of using the Preferred or Professional product was so horrible for medical users they would flock to Dragon Medical.
But, that is simply not the case.
IMHO this type of limitation will have the opposite effect that the Nuance management expects. in the long term they will loose business and will push an existing loyal customer base, and reseller channel, to seek alternative solutions.
First and foremost, let me defend Eric. Eric is simply the leading and largest distributor of Nuance product. In this case the decision by Nuance to restrict this access to users of Medical Software (EMR Software) for the Preferred or any other version, then a lot of users will not buy the upgrade, having a adverse effect on his company. Therefore, I think we should applaud him for at least providing his input and links to official positions by Nuance.
That being said, I think the hair brain that actually created a restriction like this will face lots of issues. I would not be surprised to see sales of what would be one of the most popular products on the market does not get upgraded by many EMR users. They will most likely not seek a alternative as the user above mentions, they will just keep using version 9.5, not spend any money or return the 10 version if they bought it.
Reddy has made very good comments on this subject in another thread.
The cost to Nuance is high for this. I understand that anyone can load a medical dictionary and guess what, recognition is much better. This mutes the arguments of the white paper.
I for one as a EMR Manufacture who embeds Nuance in the product am very excited about upgrading all our end users to this new version. Since we incorporate the cost in the product our user base does not have to deal with this issue.
For us it is just the fact that all our users will need 1GB ram now on there computers that is our biggest hurdle. But oh well, that is the nature of technology.
Brendon: First and foremost, let me defend Eric. Eric is simply the leading and largest distributor of Nuance product. In this case the decision by Nuance to restrict this access to users of Medical Software (EMR Software) for the Preferred or any other version, then a lot of users will not buy the upgrade, having a adverse effect on his company. Therefore, I think we should applaud him for at least providing his input and links to official positions by Nuance.
Brendon,
I was not bashing Dr. Fishman. Our company has created third party vocabularies for Dragon since version 1.0. In fact, 1450, Inc. has sold our products for years to the VAR channel.
I'm simply wanted to show our product performs similar to DNS medical in DNS Preferred and DNS Professional.
KnowBrainer is also a third-party medical vocabulary manufacturer and we can verify trigamtech’s, the manufacturers of the Trigram specialty vocabularies, test results. We also sell NaturallySpeaking and although we will be the first to say that Dragon Medical 10 is the best speech recognition product available, for those who can't afford it, similar results can be obtained by adding a third-party medical vocabulary to NaturallySpeaking Pro 10 and even Preferred 10 (which we sell below our own cost).As far as Nuance crippling the other versions of NaturallySpeaking to prevent them from working in the major EMR applications are concerned, there's a very simple 10 second non-EULA violating procedure that will take care of the problem permanently and our customers won't have to worry about this issue.
Lunis Orcutt - Nuance Dragon Medical Gold Certified BBB Accredited Speech Recognition/Microphone Solutions Provider
I'll stay out of the controversies discussed in this topic, but would like to add some comments pertaining to the usefulness of Dragon 10 Medical and extend Lunis Orcutt's comments about Dragon 10 to Dragon 10 Medical.
My comments are based on a couple of months of use with two beta versions and also an opportunity to evaluate the final, recently released final product. My testing has occurred in the real-life environment of a medical clinic and in the loud and chaotic setting of an inpatient hospital ward. As you will see, Dragon 10 Medical is not simply the Professional version with an added medical vocabulary, but truly a product honed for the needs of the medical professional and with a variety of new enhancements designed to assist in work-flow and efficiency. The integration of Dragon 10 Medical with the PowerMic II microphone (http://www.speechrecsolutions.com/microphones_dictaphone.html) is especially exciting.
Please visit these links to read my full review:
Speech Recognition Solutions review of Dragon 10 Medical (http://www.speechrecsolutions.com/assets/Dragon10Medical_Review.pdf)
Speech Recognition Solutions Guide to Using Dragon 10 Medical (http://www.speechrecsolutions.com/assets/Dragon10MedicalGuide.pdf)
I highly recommend that medical practitioners upgrade to Dragon 10 Medical and strongly suggest you take advantage of the special pricing mentioned by Dr. Fishman which will expire at the end of this month.
Jon Wahrenberger, MDSpeech Recognition Solutions
Jon W. Wahrenberger, MD Speech Recognition Solutions
Jon Wahrenberger: As you will see, Dragon 10 Medical is not simply the Professional version with an added medical vocabulary, but truly a product honed for the needs of the medical professional and with a variety of new enhancements designed to assist in work-flow and efficiency.
As you will see, Dragon 10 Medical is not simply the Professional version with an added medical vocabulary, but truly a product honed for the needs of the medical professional and with a variety of new enhancements designed to assist in work-flow and efficiency.
This type of vague explanation doesn't fly here.
Nuance is a adversarial underperforming company with a track record of releasing buggy software (The infamous PaperPort 10).
Your vague explanation isn't good enough to convince anyone that the Medical Edition isn't just the Professional version with a medical vocabulary.
Note: I only know Dragon 9.5 (and 8, 7). I doubt Dragon 10 is worth it. I cannot support Nuance's dirty tactics blocking Dragon 10 Pro users from using Dragon with their EMRs. Talk about a pathetic, desperate move Nuance (aka Scansoft).
email:
The decision to make EMR capabilities available in Dragon Medical only is threefold:
1). Our customers: While 70,000 caregivers use Dragon Medical speech recognition software to drive clinical documentation, there is a substantial clinical user population who use consumer versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking in medical settings and simply do not achieve the accuracy, quality, profitably or usability that would be achieved with Dragon Medical. We have received negative feedback from clinicians about the performance of the consumer versions of Dragon in medical settings via KLAS (a research firm specializing in monitoring and reporting the performance of healthcare vendors) and from customers themselves.
2). What goes into Dragon Medical: Nuance has made a significant investment in building, tuning and distributing Dragon Medical for exclusive use by the healthcare industry. The integration and engineering required to deliver the ease-of-use of Dragon Medical with all major EMR vendors, including Allscripts™, Epic, Misys®, GE® Healthcare, NextGen®, Siemens, eClinicalWorks, Meditech, McKesson®, Cerner and Eclipsys®, requires a Herculean effort, comprising thousands of man hours in developing and testing. As one would expect, there is a premium associated with the delivery of this capability and the resources devoted to further hone and evolve the product to meet the specific needs of the medical end user.
3). The difference in solutions and cost: It is common practice in the software industry to set a price structure equal to the value of functionality that a solution offers and is consistent with other enterprise/professional vs. consumer software offerings (Microsoft’s Office Home = $100 vs. Microsoft Office Professional = $500). Dragon Medical 10 is the only Dragon solution that offers medical specific vocabularies, optimizes accuracy for medical dictation and provides integrated EMR voice activated commands and documentation. The decision has been made to associate these specific medical features, along with other new version 10 functionality in Dragon Medical only.
We believe there is a sound and equitable business judgment underlying our decisions, yet we understand the frustration from some customers who have been using non-medial Dragon versions in medical settings. Please note, along with the launch of Dragon Medical 10 we are now providing attractive upgrade offers for all customers. We are committed to extending the value and user base of all Dragon versions and will work with our customers to do so.
DrMurdoch:
My post wasn't designed to defend Nuance or to take sides in what is apparently (and understandably) a controversial move on their part. I don't sell software or vocabularies. Nuance never asked for my opinion on this matter and in the review linked to my post I referred to their decision in this regard to be regrettable. But unless and until Nuance changes the practice which has become the focus of such angst, there will be physicians (including members of this forum) who are interested in Dragon 10 Medical and who will want to evaluate any differences in the medical and professional versions. There are differences beyond the presence of a medical vocabulary, most notably a high level of integration with the PowerMic, the presence of variable fields which facilitate navigation throughout documents, and lots of formatting options pertaining to medical vocabulary. You may consider these differences trivial and are entitled to your opinion. It is not my intension to convince you or anyone of the significance of these differences. My only intension is to provide some information about Dragon 10 Medical. I am quite sure that forum members will read what I and others post and decide for themselves what they can afford and what they will purchase. But it seems to me that learning about Dragon 10 Medical and hearing of other's experience with it can only be helpful in the decision process.
Jon Wahrenberger:There are differences beyond the presence of a medical vocabulary, most notably a high level of integration with the PowerMic, the presence of variable fields which facilitate navigation throughout documents, I note you are selling the PowerMic at $489.00. This is another proprietary feature of Dragon Medical. The PowerMic has the same features as the $200 less expensive Phillips SpeechMike. However, Nuance has made it impossible to use the Philips SpeechMike with Dragon Medical. Therefore add another $200 to the cost of using the features built into Dragon Medical. Marty Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.See our new WSR Forum at:http://www.msspeech-forum.com
Jon Wahrenberger:There are differences beyond the presence of a medical vocabulary, most notably a high level of integration with the PowerMic, the presence of variable fields which facilitate navigation throughout documents,
I note you are selling the PowerMic at $489.00. This is another proprietary feature of Dragon Medical. The PowerMic has the same features as the $200 less expensive Phillips SpeechMike. However, Nuance has made it impossible to use the Philips SpeechMike with Dragon Medical. Therefore add another $200 to the cost of using the features built into Dragon Medical.
Marty Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.See our new WSR Forum at:http://www.msspeech-forum.com
Nuance Representative: The decision to make EMR capabilities available in Dragon Medical only is threefold: 1). Our customers: While 70,000 caregivers use Dragon Medical speech recognition software to drive clinical documentation, there is a substantial clinical user population who use consumer versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking in medical settings and simply do not achieve the accuracy, quality, profitably or usability that would be achieved with Dragon Medical. We have received negative feedback from clinicians about the performance of the consumer versions of Dragon in medical settings via KLAS (a research firm specializing in monitoring and reporting the performance of healthcare vendors) and from customers themselves. 2). What goes into Dragon Medical: Nuance has made a significant investment in building, tuning and distributing Dragon Medical for exclusive use by the healthcare industry. The integration and engineering required to deliver the ease-of-use of Dragon Medical with all major EMR vendors, including Allscripts™, Epic, Misys®, GE® Healthcare, NextGen®, Siemens, eClinicalWorks, Meditech, McKesson®, Cerner and Eclipsys®, requires a Herculean effort, comprising thousands of man hours in developing and testing. As one would expect, there is a premium associated with the delivery of this capability and the resources devoted to further hone and evolve the product to meet the specific needs of the medical end user. 3). The difference in solutions and cost: It is common practice in the software industry to set a price structure equal to the value of functionality that a solution offers and is consistent with other enterprise/professional vs. consumer software offerings (Microsoft’s Office Home = $100 vs. Microsoft Office Professional = $500). Dragon Medical 10 is the only Dragon solution that offers medical specific vocabularies, optimizes accuracy for medical dictation and provides integrated EMR voice activated commands and documentation. The decision has been made to associate these specific medical features, along with other new version 10 functionality in Dragon Medical only. We believe there is a sound and equitable business judgment underlying our decisions, yet we understand the frustration from some customers who have been using non-medial Dragon versions in medical settings. Please note, along with the launch of Dragon Medical 10 we are now providing attractive upgrade offers for all customers. We are committed to extending the value and user base of all Dragon versions and will work with our customers to do so.
What utter nonsense. To rebut your doublespeak:
1) What are the specific numbers that represent this so-called "substantial clinical user population who use consumer versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking in medical settings and simply do not achieve the accuracy, quality, profitably or usability that would be achieved with Dragon Medical"? Who commissioned the "study" comparing success rates of physicians using the medical versus non-medical versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking? Your claims sound like absolute B.S. made up in an attempt to justify your predatory pricing model.
Your company has basically told all of the physicians who were previously successfully using non-medical versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking with an EMR to go **** themselves. And you didn't even have the decency to warn purchasers of the non-medical versions of DNS 10 that you were crippling the software. Where is there precedent for a company to target one specific group of users and actually PREVENT them from using an application with software that this group uses to perform their jobs? This type of behaviour reeks of discrimination and I would hope that there are laws to prevent this type of sleaziness from software companies. Would it be considered to be acceptable if your company prevented the use of certain less expensive versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking with software used by the disabled, just so that you could force the disabled to purchase a different version of DNS marketed specifically to the disabled at EIGHT times the price of your other version? Or is it okay just to discriminate against physicians? Why is it that you feel you can take advantage of a group of individuals that has supported your software from Day 1? If your company ends up going bankrupt because physicians en masse now turn their backs on Dragon NaturallySpeaking in disgust and embrace a competing product like Windows Speech Recognition http://www.microsoft.com/enable/products/windowsvista/speech.aspx then I hope you remember the day you officially shot yourselves in the foot. Don't come running back here begging us to give you a second chance - Nuance has made a cold, calculating decision to discriminate against physicians in order to fill the company's coffers. As a user of DNS and its predecessors since the discrete speech days, I would like you to tell whoever sent you here (presumably to do damage control) that I am OUTRAGED that your company would have the nerve to try to take advantage of physicians like this. Shame on you!
2) The issue is not about what you feel it costs to make the medical version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. If you think it's "worth" $1600, while the Preferred version sells for $200, that's your own business. It should be up to the end user to decide for themselves if the medical version is worth - to them - paying EIGHT times the price. If so many physicians have found that that they are already getting "good enough" results with DNS Preferred version 9 it seems obvious that your company has realized that with the release of version 10 it has likely gotten to the point where there is essentially no appreciable difference from the physician's perspective between the $1600 medical and $200 Preferred versions. At that point your market for the $1600 software would disappear unless you decided to institute a sleazy, discriminatory practice like you have just done. Your company's inability to differentiate between the various versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking in terms of features or value is not something that physicians should be blamed for or victimized by.
3) The last time I checked, Microsoft actually offered different programs in their Professional bundle and didn't cripple use of its applications by checking to see what other software I have running on my computers. Yes, companies can charge different amounts for programs depending on whether they are going to be used by an individual at home versus by a student or teacher versus by a business. But to actually allow ALL business users except ONE group to use a company's less expensive software in a business setting is absolutely unprecedented in my experience. I cannot even fathom how a software company could even think that they could get away with such a policy. If your company wants to say that the only version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking that can be used in a medical office is the $1600 medical version, then so be it. No doubt you will lose many previously loyal customers who are shocked and disgusted by your arrogance, but at least presenting your marketing decision in such a way would be a great deal more honest than what you have already done with the release of DNS 10. After 10 years of using DNS and its predecessors, I am now counting the days until I can remove your products from ALL of my computers, for good. As to all of the other Scansoft/Nuance products: I now wouldn't use any of your programs even if I was given them for free.
I will be encouraging all of by colleagues to boycott the use of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10. My office recently picked up an extra copy of DNS 9 Preferred (for less than $60 if you ever send us the $50 rebate) from Amazon.com and there are a lot more copies out there that physicians can buy. I predict your company will rue the day that you decided to pull this little stunt.
Please take your spin doctoring and damage control B.S. elsewhere, Madam.
Dr.Osler
(EMR user for over 15 years.)
Dr. Osler - highest rated by patients.
mmarkoe: Jon Wahrenberger:There are differences beyond the presence of a medical vocabulary, most notably a high level of integration with the PowerMic, the presence of variable fields which facilitate navigation throughout documents, I note you are selling the PowerMic at $489.00. This is another proprietary feature of Dragon Medical. The PowerMic has the same features as the $200 less expensive Phillips SpeechMike. However, Nuance has made it impossible to use the Philips SpeechMike with Dragon Medical. Therefore add another $200 to the cost of using the features built into Dragon Medical. Marty Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.See our new WSR Forum at:http://www.msspeech-forum.com
Unbelievable. So my old SpeechMike Pro 6274 wouldn't work with DNS 10 Medical? This is the type of thing why people are pushing so hard for Open Source software. None of this "you scratch my back and support my hardware to the exclusion of others and I'll scratch your back and defend your sleazy business practice by posting as if I'm an unbiased observer" nonsense.
Nuance seems to be sinking deeper and deeper into the muck every year. What on earth are they thinking? Are the people that decide marketing policies at Nuance all crazy or are they the boldest poker players of all time? Well I'm calling Nuance's bluff. And guess what... they've got nothing.
Dr. Osler
Osler: What utter nonsense. To rebut your doublespeak: 1) What are the specific numbers that represent this so-called "substantial clinical user population who use consumer versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking in medical settings and simply do not achieve the accuracy, quality, profitably or usability that would be achieved with Dragon Medical"? Who commissioned the "study" comparing success rate of physicians using the medical versus non-medical versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking? Your claims sound like absolut B.S. made up in an attempt to justify your predatory pricing model. Your company has basically told all of the physicians who were previously successfully using non-medical versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking with an EMR to go **** themselves. And you didn't even have the decency to warn purchasers of the non-medical versions of DNS 10 that you were crippling the software. Where is there precedent for a company to target one specific group of users and actually PREVENT them from using an application with software that this group uses to perform their jobs? This type of behaviour reeks of discrimination and I would hope that there are laws to prevent this type of sleaziness from software companies. Would it be considered to be acceptable if your company prevented the use of certain less expensive versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking with software used by the disabled, just so that you could force the disabled to purchase a different version of DNS marketed specifically to the disabled at EIGHT times the price of your other version? Or is it okay just to discriminate against physicians? Why is it that you feel you can take advantage of a group of induals that has supported your software from Day 1? If your company ends up going bankrupt because physicians en masse now turn their backs on Dragon NaturallySpeaking in disgust and embrace a competing product like Windows Speech Recognition http://www.microsoft.com/enable/products/windowsvista/speech.aspx then I hope you remember the day you officially shot yourselves in the foot. Don't come running back here begging us to give you a second chance - Nuance has made a cold, calculating decision to discriminate against physicians in order to fill the company's coffers. As a user of DNS and its predecessors since the discrete speech days, I would like you to tell whoever sent you here (presumably to do damage control) that I am OUTRAGED that your company would have the nerve to try to take advantage of physicians like this. Shame on you! 2) The issue is not about what you feel it costs to make the medical version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. If you think it's "worth" $1600, while the Preferred version sells for $200, that's your own business. It should be up to the end user to decide for themselves if the medical version is worth - to them - paying EIGHT times the price. If so many physicians have found that that they are already getting "good enough" results with DNS version 9 it seems obvious that your company has realized that with the release of version 10 it has likely gotten to the point where there is essentially no appreciable difference from the physician's perspective between the $1600 medical and $200 Preferred versions. At that point your market for the $1600 software would disappear unless you decided to institute a sleazy, discriminatory practice like you have just done. Your company's inability to differentiate between the various versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking in terms of features or value is not something that physicians should be blamed for or victimized by. 3) The last time I checked, Microsoft actually offered different programs in their Professional bundle and didn't cripple use of it's applications by checking to see what other software I have running on my computers. Yes, companies can charge different amounts for programs depending on whether they are going to be used by an individual at home versus by a student or teacher versus by a business. But to actually allow ALL business users except ONE group to use a company's less expensive software in a business setting is absolutely unprecedented in my experience. I cannot even fathom how a software company could even think that they could get away with such a policy. If your company wants to say that the only version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking that can be used in a medical office is the $1600 medical version, then so be it. No doubt you will lose many previously loyal customers who are shocked and disgusted by your arrogance, but at least presenting your marketing decision in such a way would be a great deal more honest than what you have already done with the release of DNS 10. After 10 years of using DNS and its predecessors, I am now counting the days until I can remove your products from ALL of my computers, for good. As to all of the other Scansoft/Nuance products: I now wouldn't use any of your programs even if I was given them for free. I will be encouraging all of by colleagues to boycott the use of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10. My office recently picked up an extra copy of DNS 9 Preferred (for less than $60 if you ever send us the $50 rebate) from Amazon.com and there are a lot more copies out there that physicians can buy. I predict your company will rue the day that you decided to pull this little stunt. Please take your spin doctoring and damage control B.S. elsewhere, Madam. Dr.Osler
1) What are the specific numbers that represent this so-called "substantial clinical user population who use consumer versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking in medical settings and simply do not achieve the accuracy, quality, profitably or usability that would be achieved with Dragon Medical"? Who commissioned the "study" comparing success rate of physicians using the medical versus non-medical versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking? Your claims sound like absolut B.S. made up in an attempt to justify your predatory pricing model.
Your company has basically told all of the physicians who were previously successfully using non-medical versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking with an EMR to go **** themselves. And you didn't even have the decency to warn purchasers of the non-medical versions of DNS 10 that you were crippling the software. Where is there precedent for a company to target one specific group of users and actually PREVENT them from using an application with software that this group uses to perform their jobs? This type of behaviour reeks of discrimination and I would hope that there are laws to prevent this type of sleaziness from software companies. Would it be considered to be acceptable if your company prevented the use of certain less expensive versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking with software used by the disabled, just so that you could force the disabled to purchase a different version of DNS marketed specifically to the disabled at EIGHT times the price of your other version? Or is it okay just to discriminate against physicians? Why is it that you feel you can take advantage of a group of induals that has supported your software from Day 1? If your company ends up going bankrupt because physicians en masse now turn their backs on Dragon NaturallySpeaking in disgust and embrace a competing product like Windows Speech Recognition http://www.microsoft.com/enable/products/windowsvista/speech.aspx then I hope you remember the day you officially shot yourselves in the foot. Don't come running back here begging us to give you a second chance - Nuance has made a cold, calculating decision to discriminate against physicians in order to fill the company's coffers. As a user of DNS and its predecessors since the discrete speech days, I would like you to tell whoever sent you here (presumably to do damage control) that I am OUTRAGED that your company would have the nerve to try to take advantage of physicians like this. Shame on you!
2) The issue is not about what you feel it costs to make the medical version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. If you think it's "worth" $1600, while the Preferred version sells for $200, that's your own business. It should be up to the end user to decide for themselves if the medical version is worth - to them - paying EIGHT times the price. If so many physicians have found that that they are already getting "good enough" results with DNS version 9 it seems obvious that your company has realized that with the release of version 10 it has likely gotten to the point where there is essentially no appreciable difference from the physician's perspective between the $1600 medical and $200 Preferred versions. At that point your market for the $1600 software would disappear unless you decided to institute a sleazy, discriminatory practice like you have just done. Your company's inability to differentiate between the various versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking in terms of features or value is not something that physicians should be blamed for or victimized by.
3) The last time I checked, Microsoft actually offered different programs in their Professional bundle and didn't cripple use of it's applications by checking to see what other software I have running on my computers. Yes, companies can charge different amounts for programs depending on whether they are going to be used by an individual at home versus by a student or teacher versus by a business. But to actually allow ALL business users except ONE group to use a company's less expensive software in a business setting is absolutely unprecedented in my experience. I cannot even fathom how a software company could even think that they could get away with such a policy. If your company wants to say that the only version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking that can be used in a medical office is the $1600 medical version, then so be it. No doubt you will lose many previously loyal customers who are shocked and disgusted by your arrogance, but at least presenting your marketing decision in such a way would be a great deal more honest than what you have already done with the release of DNS 10. After 10 years of using DNS and its predecessors, I am now counting the days until I can remove your products from ALL of my computers, for good. As to all of the other Scansoft/Nuance products: I now wouldn't use any of your programs even if I was given them for free.
Dr. Osler,
Thank you for your post. You hit the nail on the head!
Joe Buckle, Trigram Technology
Nuance Representative: The integration and engineering required to deliver the ease-of-use of Dragon Medical with all major EMR vendors, including Allscripts™, Epic, Misys®, GE® Healthcare, NextGen®, Siemens, eClinicalWorks, Meditech, McKesson®, Cerner and Eclipsys®, requires a Herculean effort,
I am hurt, as a Dragon OEM who actually supports your company you don't even list us as a vendor, even though we participate here.
After three years of working with your toolkit and helping to debug it, we would have expected a bit more.
Nuance Representative: 1). Our customers: While 70,000 caregivers use Dragon Medical speech recognition software to drive clinical documentation, there is a substantial clinical user population who use consumer versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking in medical settings and simply do not achieve the accuracy, quality, profitably or usability that would be achieved with Dragon Medical. We have received negative feedback from clinicians about the performance of the consumer versions of Dragon in medical settings via KLAS (a research firm specializing in monitoring and reporting the performance of healthcare vendors) and from customers themselves.
I am offended that you would presume to know what level of accuracy and quality I find acceptable. I bought my Dragon Preferred at a CompUSA closeout sale for $149 and got exactly what I paid for- an excellent program that can handle the basic dictation needs of an internist. I do not use big fancy words often and am happy to type a word or two if needed. $1,500 is nearly a week of income for me. There is NO WAY I will pay that, nor will many physicians who are happily using v9.
Many of us are sick and tired of being "raped" by vendors who think all doctors make $500,000 a year.