I’ve always been a little bit skeptical about paying the $1000+ for the medical version of Dragon Naturally Speaking. $1000 just seems like a lot of money to be paying for what seems to amount to some medical dictionaries. However, someone who is very familiar with nuance and Dragon Naturally Speaking told me that doctors should really purchase the DNS Medical or they’ll end up dissatisfied.

Well, today I was reading the forum on Amazon for Dragon Naturally Speaking which asks if the medical version is worth it for doctors. The responses generally weren’t worth while, but someone who calls themselves “Pain Doc” suggested the following:

I have used DNS for about 7 years. I started with version 6 as I recall. I had my transcriptionist email me the text files from all my dictations for several years and then I “fed” those to DNS to learn the vocabulary. I then had a very serviceable medical DNS for my practice and an unemployed transcriptionist.

What a genius idea for anyone that’s currently doing transcription. A great way to save about $1000 on software.

Check out the following prices for the various versions of DNS on Amazon:
Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Preferred – Currently $151.49 with $50 rebate ($101.49 after rebate)
Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 Preferred – Currently $92.97
I’m still looking around for the best location to buy Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical.

Interestingly, this same person quote above also said, “I also upgraded to DNS 10.0 which is a total POS. I am back to 9.0 and wouldn’t recommend 10.0 to anyone.” I’d love to hear more people’s comments on this subject.