|
What
makes a laptop for Medical personal different from any other laptop?
To
answer that question you need to explore some of the specific needs of those in
the medical profession.
- You need compatibility with 64 bit operating systems. It is inconceivable that one would consider buying
a new Medical laptop that did not run Dragon Naturally Speaking (DNS) without
any limitations whatsoever. DNS Version 10.1 through Version 13 require
your operating system and laptop to fully support 64 bit
compatibility.
- Quality and speed.
DNS is a complex program that requires very high performance components
in virtually every section of your laptop to deliver satisfying speed
and accuracy. Doctors tell us
that slow response times and poor accuracy are invariably their biggest annoyance
when using voice recognition systems for clinical work. It is fact that
if the voice recognition system is not competitive with standard
dictation using a recorder and a human transcriptionist, Physicians will
most likely reject it. In order
to achieve usable, satisfying performance from DNS, you are going
to have to have a laptop that has a very high level of "Computing Power”
that can keep up with normal speech rates, be operated at the maximum
accuracy settings, and be done processing your last phrase before you
are ready to speak the next one. You will probably not tolerate the
annoying, time consuming pauses needed by DNS running on a slow computer
while you are waiting to dictate your next sentence. Physicians waste enough time because
of the EMR. There is no reason to waste more time on the EMR because you
didn’t buy an adequate laptop computer.
If your laptop is a mass marketed consumer grade machine, it
almost certainly means that you will almost certainly get unacceptable
performance from that laptop in a real-life setting of clinical medicine
using an EMR and DNS. Ultra high performance from a laptop is the
result of much more than just a fast processor, it is the result of
matching high quality components such as the processor, processor cache
characteristics, random access memory (RAM), motherboard chipset, solid
state disk drives, video/audio circuitry and other components to
optimize the task at hand, in this case, voice recognition.
- M-Tech laptops use components that are "the cream of
the crop”, painstakingly selected for performance and reliability and matched
to optimize the performance of DNS while simultaneously running your EMR
and almost anything else you want to run
- Sound card quality and port output variety. M-Tech laptops have at a minimum four external
USB 2.0/3.0 ports, standard microphone and headphone ports, "line in”
inputs, as well as an optical digital audio input associated with the
highest level of internal soundcard quality found on any laptop
today. You need only use a high quality USB microphone/headset
plugged directly into one of your USB Ports. Of course, because of
the multiple USB 3.0/2.0 ports and other audio input options, your choices
of standalone microphone systems
or external sound cards are never limited by our machine, but a high
quality USB microphone is more than adequate. For technical
reasons, a USB microphone is preferred anyway. Call us if you have
questions on this. Knowbrainer.com (www.knowbrainer.com),
the leading reseller of DNS has extensively reviewed our systems and has
stated that while their standard recommendation for most laptop owners is
to upgrade to an external sound card, M-Tech laptops are the only laptops
that Knowbrainer has identified where an upgraded sound card does not
improve the performance of DNS..
- An unlimited number of options for maximum system
RAM, Multiple drives, and drive varieties, e.g., mSATA, SSD, and HDD. We can put an astounding two terabytes (2 TB) of
storage in many of our laptops, more data than most Physicians will
create in their lifetime. This is perfect for the Physician who creates a large
amount of video content, known for taking huge amounts of disk space,
but when you have 2 TB of storage, who cares?. All the latest versions of Dragon
NaturallySpeaking including DNS 12 and the new DNS 13, run on all recent
M-Tech laptops. However, call and ask what changes we might
suggest for your new laptop to get the best performance for your
individual situation. You can
count on us giving you an honest recommendation regarding your needs. We
create laptops used by Intel, Apple, Motorola engineers, aerospace
engineers, etc., that far exceed the needs of almost any physician, and
we will be happy to sell you one if you insist, but you don’t need it.
We will not try to sell you more than you need, even though we have
those machines to sell. We find
that most doctors are using a single laptop for their Electronic Medical
Record (EMR), DNS, and any other essential programs. You're going
to need to use DNS with your EMR, while at the same time, running all of
the other programs you need to run while working, e.g., a thin client to
view MRI’s on your hospital’s Radiology system, Hospital laboratory
results, Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, etc.. Your M-Tech, properly
configured, will do just that. We
find that, one way or another, a native copy of DNS running resident on
your laptop will interface in an acceptable fashion with almost any other
program running on your computer that takes text input. Comments from our
medical users would indicate that the server-based version of DNS
employed in some hospitals and large clinics does not function as well
as a native copy of DNS running resident on your laptop. (It should be noted that Dragon
NaturallySpeaking may not integrate into your EMR software as well as it
does into Microsoft Word. Call us for suggestions.).
Check Nuances website for list of the completely/highly compatible
programs. Due to modifications of DNS or the programs, the list may not
be up to date, and your program might be more compatible than indicated.). If you have
questions regarding this, please give us a call.
- Cutting corners on laptop performance and
configurability will diminish the chances of DNS functioning well with
DNS and your EMR, now, and probably even more in the future. M-Tech
offers a variety of CPU choices that allows us to tweak our
super-fast laptop computers to simultaneously run far more
programs with speed and accuracy. We offer maximum system
RAM capacity and expanded drive configurability, make it highly
unlikely that your M-Tech computer will ever be a limiting factor in
your setup. If you have previously been using mass marketed brand-name
computers, no doubt you have likely experienced the frustration of
just how limited your laptops performance with DNS is when running
alone, let alone with other complex programs such as the EMR and a
Radiology viewing program running at the same time. Remember, a low
power machine will run DNS accurately, just very slowly, so DNS vendors
will tell you that your machine is adequate to use DNS, which is a
half-truth in the medical setting. What they don’t tell you is that you
are going to spend most of your time watching the computer screen while waiting
for DNS to perform its tasks. Our
Medical advisors tell us that almost every EMR program in existence has
a long way to go, is a huge source of frustration for all Physicians. With the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services (CMS) making frequent changes to EMR requirements, no
one knows exactly what to plan for in the next several years from an
Information Technology (IT) standpoint. Whatever happens with the
EMR over the next few years, rest assured that it is almost certain that
your M-Tech laptop will meet the challenge of running whatever software
is available and necessary in the future! We pride ourselves on the fact
that we equip our machines proactively so that we can take advantages of
advances in technology than may occur in the future. We had SATA III drive
headers in our machines far in advance of the availability of SATA III
hard drives, so that when SATA III drives finally became available, all
our customers had to do was replace their SATA II drive with a SATA III
drive, more than doubling effective drive speed. Almost all users of
older computers of other brands had to replace their entire computer to
take advantage of the SATA III drives, but not our customers! Why
is the freedom to use almost any storage drive in our machines
important? The ability to use ultra-fast solid state drive as the
primary drives (as opposed to the older and slower mechanical hard disk
drives) gives DNS the faster response time it needs and having the
ability to have multiple drives allows the EMR to run on another drive,
while its data is being accessed saved or manipulated on yet another
drive. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with mechanical hard
drives, and for some uses they are adequate, have more storage capacity,
and are usually much cheaper, albeit slower. A proper CPU/RAM/Drive
configuration on a high quality motherboard brings together all the
vital elements you need to convert a laptop computer into a
valuable medical practice tool. Don't ask any generically
built laptop to manage these programs, instead, allow M-tech
to build you a high quality, precision tool to assist you in your
medical practice that should be good for years to come.
|
