A general surgeon in Houston shares how he swapped his Dragon NaturallySpeaking license for AiType — and why he won't go back.
Dr. M. is a general surgeon at a Houston hospital system. He's been dictating clinical notes his entire career — first on tape-based systems, then on Dragon NaturallySpeaking, where he stayed for 12 years.
"Dragon worked," he says. "It was never perfect, but it worked. The problem was the friction: the voice training, the custom vocabulary, the Windows-only requirement. When I moved to a Mac at home, I had to keep a Windows machine just for Dragon."
The real pain was editing. Dragon's transcripts were accurate — maybe 97% word accuracy — but that 3% error rate across 30 minutes of dictation meant 5–10 minutes of post-session editing. "At the end of a long day, that editing time adds up. And the transcripts always read verbatim — filler words, false starts, all of it."
"Dragon was accurate. AiType is intelligent. That's the difference. Dragon gave me what I said. AiType gives me what I meant."— General Surgeon, Houston TX
He found AiType through a colleague who had posted about it in a physician productivity group. The trial required no voice training, no setup. "I downloaded it, tried it on my MacBook, and within 20 minutes I was dictating a clinical note into Epic's note field."
The speed surprised him: "Dragon's latency was fine — maybe a second or two. AiType is more like 250ms. It's close enough to real-time that I don't think about it."
But the real difference was the AI cleanup. "I dictate naturally — the way I speak in the OR. AiType cleans it up: removes the false starts, structures the sentences. The output reads like I wrote it. Not like I dictated it."
He uses AiType on Mac (the menubar app). His workflow: navigate to the note field in Epic, then hold Right Option and speak. The note appears, clean, already structured. He makes one quick read-through and submits.
"My per-note editing time went from 5–7 minutes to under 2 minutes. That's 60% reduction. For 8–10 notes a day, that's real time back."
He also uses AiType for email — "I can do a professional email in 30 seconds now" — and for composing referral letters directly in the dictation buffer.
"For anyone still on Dragon or Windows-only dictation tools: AiType on a Mac is better. It took me a week to feel that and another week to cancel my Dragon subscription."— General Surgeon, Houston TX
No voice training required. Works on Mac from day one.