Boost Your Dragon® Dictation Speed
While Dragon Medical Practice Edition 2 is a highly-advanced piece of speech recognition software, with an incredible capacity to understand human speech, sometimes it can seem…a little sluggish. Maybe you have experienced this, or maybe you’re running an overclocked quad core processor with 16GB of RAM, cooled by liquid nitrogen.
Yes, there are required specifications for the program, which can be found here. And yes, we do regularly suggest beefing up RAM and processor speeds for those clients who aren’t getting enough zoom from their DMPE 2 installations.
What we want you to know, though, is that there are several things you can do to streamline Dragon Medical Practice Edition 2, to reduce its strain on your system resources. Think of it as Dragon-on-a-budget, if you like.
Here, then, are 12 strategies for adding a bit of zip to your DMPE 2 experience. We’ve grouped them into two categories: Windows operations and Dragon speech-to-text settings.
Windows-Based Strategies
These first three items are well-established practices for managing and maintaining your computer. Documentation on how to perform these procedures can easily be found on the web. The last two may not apply to everyone—and again, information is available online if needed.
- Defragment your hard drive periodically. This will ensure that data is not scattered willy-nilly on your hard disk, allowing it to operate efficiently.
- Increase the paging file size, so that your system has enough virtual memory available to handle the tasks you’ll be asking of it.
- Change your Windows performance settings to disable advanced visual effects. This means selecting the “Adjust for best performance” radio button.
- If you have a mobile computer, you’ll want your power management settings configured for “high performance.” This will ensure that your processor always operates at a level appropriate for Dragon Medical Practice Edition 2.
- Believe it or not, your antivirus software can interfere with how well Dragon runs on your system. Be sure to add the following files to the exclusion / whitelist of your particular security program.
Directories:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Nuance
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Nuance
C:\ProgramData\Nuance
C:\Users\<Windows user>\AppData\Roaming\Nuance\
[Common Files Folder]\Nuance\NaturallySpeaking12\dgnuiasvr.exe
[Common Files Folder]\Nuance\NaturallySpeaking12\x64\dgnuiasvr_x64.exe
[Common Files Folder]\Nuance\dgnsvc.exe
[Program Files Folder]\Nuance\NaturallySpeaking12\Program\dnsspserver.exe
[Program Files Folder]\Nuance\NaturallySpeaking12\Program\natspeak.exe
File Extensions:
BD, BIN, DAT, DRA, DVC, ENH, GSB, GRM, GRX, INI, LCK, NWV, SIG, SVC, USR, VER, VOC, WAV, XML, LOG
Dragon-Specific Strategies
All of these tips apply specifically to options within Dragon Medical Practice Edition 2. We’ll show you how to configure them and give you an idea of what they do. Then, you can decide which strategies to follow, based on your needs.
- During profile creation, you’ll come to the “Review your choices” window. Before clicking [Create], find the [Advanced] button at the bottom right. If the speech model listed contains the phrase “Medical BestMatch V,” take a moment to write down the whole thing.Then click the dropdown menu. We’re looking for the item that perfectly matches the phrase you wrote down, but with one exception: we want the “BestMatch IV” speech model.Essentially, the BestMatch V speech model runs two separate recognitions of your speech, making the results more accurate, but also slower. You’re trading accuracy for speed with this strategy.
- When creating a new profile, skip the initial training (if possible). You will normally see this prompt after the microphone volume and quality checks—though users creating new profiles in DMPE 2.2 will not see it.If you select Skip training at that time, you are still able to return to it later. On the DragonBar, click Audio > Read text to improve accuracy. It’s the same exact training module, only you get to decide when to complete it. This strategy is a win-win, and gets you a working profile faster.
- This next tip has a number of tradeoffs. Navigate to Tools > Options > Commands on the DragonBar. Uncheck every box in the panel, except for “Enable multiple text matches.”These options enable certain minor amenities to your DMPE 2 experience—some or all of which you may not absolutely need. For instance, if you’re not planning on using Dragon to move your mouse or work in a web browser, you don’t need mouse motion commands or HTML support.Unless you’re regularly using Dragon as a tool for command-and-control of your computer, unchecking these boxes still leaves you in great shape for using speech recognition within a word processor or non-web-based EMR.
- While you’re in the Commands tab of the Options menu, click on [More Commands]. Here’s where you’ll find what are referred to as Dragon’s natural language commands. These allow you to stray a bit from the exact, word-for-word phrases needed to do things like format text or navigate a spreadsheet.At the very least, disable the applications you don’t use with speech recognition.Perhaps you’re not especially familiar with Dragon’s command phrases, but would like to uncheck all of the natural language boxes. Here’s what you do. Open the Dragon Sidebar, as well as the application you need help with. Then, review the Home tab carefully. You will find that many of the command phrases you’re searching for are right at your fingertips.
- Next, among the many tabs of the Options menu, locate the one labelled Miscellaneous. About midway down, you should see the Speed vs. Accuracy slider. Move it as far towards Fastest Response as you are willing to go. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.
- Just beneath the slider, you may want to uncheck the Voice-enable menus option. This functionality allows you to navigate application menus and click buttons like [OK] or [Cancel] using your voice.
- Finally, on the DragonBar, go to Tools > Administrative Settings. You’ll need to click [Proceed], and Dragon will close your profile. When the Administrative Settings window opens, click the Miscellaneous tab and disable the Check for product updates at startup option.This should help Dragon Medical Practice Edition 2 start up a little faster, although you’ll have to check for updates manually. This function can be found by clicking Help on the DragonBar.
Putting It All Together
Once you’ve made all of the changes you’re going to make, save your profile, close Dragon Medical Practice Edition 2, and restart your computer. Once you get rebooted, you may notice that Dragon has a little more pep in its step.
If not, you may consider further changes, as listed above, to streamline the program. Or, you might look into getting more RAM and a faster processor for your machine.