Dragon Naturally Speaking: Are you using the right version?

Many professionals in business, law, and healthcare are looking into speech recognition. A commonly recognized name in this space is the computer software Dragon Naturally Speaking. When it launched in 1997, it was the first voice recognition software to detect continuous speech. The Dragon Naturally Speaking program set a new standard for hands-free productivity.

Although Nuance retired the Naturally Speaking name in 2015, its legacy lives on in Dragon speech recognition solutions. Nuance replaced it with the Dragon Professional branding, starting with the release of Dragon Professional Individual 14. Today, the latest version - Dragon Professional v16-continues to lead the market, having launched in 2021.

Philips SpeechLive already integrates each of these leading solutions for powerful speech recognition capabilities. But what exactly is Dragon Professional v1? How is it different from Dragon Professional Anywhereand Dragon Legal Anywhere?

Let's have a look at the various successors of Dragon Naturally Speaking software.

Dragon Professional Software

Dragon Professional v16 is primarily an on-site based speech recognition software, available for Windows 10 and Windows 11. This solution caters to individual users who want a simple, high-quality local solution.

This speech to text software comes with an impressive range of customization options. Users can create custom voice commands to streamline repetitive or manual processes. This includes inserting standard boilerplate texts or signatures into documents.

A vocabulary management capability allows you to add industry-specific terms or acronyms that you might use regularly. When deployed at the enterprise level, the Nuance Management Center allows organizations to oversee employee usage, monitor license consumption, and manage user permissions efficiently.

Dragon Professional v16 is certainly an impressive software. It enables users to seamlessly navigate between applications, create documents and compose emails - just using speech. 

But what about using Dragon on multiple devices? Or having access to your custom vocabulary and voice commands to create documents wherever you are? The solution is the cloud-based Dragon Professional Anywhere software.

Dragon Professional Anywhere

Dragon Professional Anywhere offers much of the same functionality of Dragon Professional v16, but with some important additional benefits. One main advantage is its cloud-based nature - a vital aspect for many organizations in this hybrid-working era.

Cloud-based speech recognition offers flexibility for knowledge workers and field professionals. Whether you're in the office, working from home or on a customer site - you can create high-quality documentation. This approach streamlines repetitive and manual documentation processes, thereby saving time and boosting productivity and efficiency.

Dragon Professional Anywhere is highly scalable and works across an existing infrastructure of Windows-based devices. The software supports virtual IT environments, such as Citrix and VmWare. This means that current IT infrastructures can quickly and easily integrate this solution.

Another advantage of the cloud-based approach is the use of artificial intelligence to transcribe speech into text. This feature makes the system more accurate (with Nuance claiming up to 99% accuracy). Running an AI-based system on a local PC is usually difficult because of limited computing power. However, Professional Anywhere offers access to AI tools online, allowing users to take advantage of these powerful resources.

As with Dragon Professional v16, organizations can utilize the Nuance Management Center. IT teams can centrally manage user access and customizations across departments.

Dragon Professional Anywhere also offers a number of other significant benefits common to cloud-based solutions. Users always have access to the latest updates through cloud delivery, and work with the same software version. 

Cloud-based systems typically offer stronger security and greater resilience than most individual businesses can achieve on their own. For example, you can encrypt voice messages before transmission. Additionally, cloud providers often need to meet international compliance standards (such as ISO) for data storage.

Another key advantage of the cloud is that it protects your voice files, even if someone steals or hacks your PC or mobile device. Recovery times are significantly faster for businesses using cloud solutions when compared to those not utilizing such services.

Dragon Legal Anywhere

Dragon Legal Anywhere offers the same powerful features as Dragon Professional Anywhere. In this form, however, Nuance has tailored it specifically for legal professionals. It helps solicitors, barristers, and other legal practitioners create high-quality documentation more efficiently - simply by using their voice.

Dragon Legal Anywhere trains using millions of words from legal documents. It delivers up to 99% recognition accuracy for a variety of legal terms, and automatically formats legal citations. Each feature enables legal professionals to simply and easily create commonly used documents, such as briefs and contracts.

These sophisticated workflow capabilities speeds up the entire document creation process. This enables savings on support services and allows a greater focus on billable work. Ultimately, the Dragon Legal Anywhere software provides an enhanced service to clients in legal fields.

Summary

Nuance may have discontinued the Dragon Naturally Speaking name, but its legacy remains. Today, Dragon Professional and Dragon Professional Anywhere deliver high-quality speech recognition for various fields. Both offer an impressive range of industry-leading features and functionality. These speech to text solutions allow busy professionals to create and edit documents many times faster than typing.

Demand is increasing for anywhere, anytime dictation. As the leading cloud-based solution, Philips SpeechLive integrates Dragon Professional Anywhere and Dragon Legal Anywhere to meet the evolving needs of a hybrid workforce. Book a demo with SpeechLive today!