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Oncology notes are long because the history is long. A new patient consult carries the diagnosis, pathology, biomarkers, staging, prior treatment and a plan with a named regimen. Every treatment visit then adds toxicity grading, labs and dose changes. The names that matter most, the drugs and the biomarkers, are exactly the words a general speech tool has never seen.
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Why general dictation struggles with oncology
Cancer drug names are long, new and often sound like nothing in everyday English, so a general tool splits them or writes something close. The Healthcare dictionary corrects these, among many others:
| Heard as | Written as |
|---|---|
| osimertineb | osimertinib |
| carbo platin | carboplatin |
| paclitaxell | paclitaxel |
| trastuzamab | trastuzumab |
| palbocicleb | palbociclib |
| pembrolizamab | pembrolizumab |
| her two | HER2 |
| neumonitis | pneumonitis |
| tumor bord | tumor board |
Beyond the listed corrections, VoicePrivate compares an unknown long word with the dictionary by sound, so a close miss on a drug name is snapped to its correct spelling. It never swaps one real drug name for a different one, which matters when two agents differ by a few letters.
The Oncology setting on Mac
Choose Oncology in Settings, under Medical specialty. Recognition is then primed with terms such as adenocarcinoma, non-small cell lung cancer, EGFR, ALK, osimertinib, carboplatin, pembrolizumab, nivolumab, chemoradiation, PET CT, ECOG, neutropenia, HER2, letrozole, tamoxifen, sentinel lymph node and palliative care. The full 74,000+ term medical dictionary remains available. On Windows there is no specialty picker and the whole dictionary applies.
Oncology documents by stage of care
- Diagnosis and consult
- Referral reason, pathology with histology and grade, biomarkers such as HER2 and PD-L1, TNM staging, performance status, and the treatment recommendation. Often sent back as a consult letter.
- Treatment planning
- Regimen, dose, cycle length and intent, port-a-cath placement, premedication with ondansetron and dexamethasone, consent discussion.
- Treatment visits
- Cycle and day, toxicities with grade, counts, dose holds or reductions, growth factor support with pegfilgrastim.
- Response and surveillance
- Interval imaging, response assessment, maintenance therapy, survivorship plans.
- Tumor board and palliative care
- Case summaries for presentation, recommendations, goals of care conversations.
Example: dictating a lung cancer treatment visit
- Interval history. Press Command+Shift+Space: "Sixty four year old with stage IV non-small cell lung cancer, adenocarcinoma, EGFR exon 19 deletion, on osimertinib 80 milligrams daily, here for month 6 follow up." Press the hotkey again.
- Toxicity: press Command+Shift+Space and say: "Grade 1 rash and grade 1 diarrhea. No cough or dyspnea to suggest pneumonitis. ECOG 1." Press the hotkey again.
- Results: press Command+Shift+Space and say: "PET CT from October 14 shows continued partial response, primary lesion 1.8 centimeters from 3.1." Press the hotkey again.
- Plan: press Command+Shift+Space and say: "Continue osimertinib at current dose. Repeat imaging in 3 months. Present at tumor board on Thursday." Press the hotkey again.
VoicePrivate transcribes after each stop and pastes the paragraph at your cursor. The text appears when you stop speaking, not while you talk.
EHR workflow, including Epic Beacon
VoicePrivate is not an EHR plug in. It pastes through the clipboard and then restores what you had copied before, so it works anywhere you can paste: Epic (including the Beacon oncology module), Oracle Health (Cerner), Flatiron OncoEMR, athenahealth and others. If the EHR runs in Citrix, clipboard redirection must be allowed for your session. Regimen orders and dose calculations stay in your EHR's order tools. VoicePrivate only writes the narrative. See the EHR dictation guide.
Privacy
Speech is processed on the computer that runs VoicePrivate. Audio never leaves it, and nothing is sent to a cloud service for transcription. With Auto-save transcriptions on, which is the default, each dictation is also kept in the app's Library on that computer. Turn it off in Settings if you want the EHR to hold the only copy.
Price
Healthcare Edition is $297 a year or $34.99 a month for each clinician. There is no free trial. Individual monthly and annual plans carry a 30-day money-back guarantee on the first payment. Practices of 2 to 20 clinicians can buy team seats.
Oncology dictation FAQ
Does VoicePrivate know new cancer drugs?
The Healthcare dictionary includes targeted therapies, immunotherapy agents and chemotherapy drugs such as osimertinib, palbociclib, trastuzumab, pembrolizumab, carboplatin and paclitaxel. If a newer agent is missing, add it to your dictionary with the ways it gets misheard.
Can it write a regimen or calculate doses?
No. VoicePrivate is dictation software. It writes what you say. Orders and dose calculations stay in your EHR.
Does text appear while I speak?
No. Press the hotkey to start and again to stop, and the finished text is pasted.
Will it paste into OncoEMR or Epic Beacon?
Yes, into any field that accepts a paste. In a Citrix session, clipboard redirection must be enabled.
Is there a free trial?
No. Individual monthly and annual plans are charged at checkout with a 30-day money-back guarantee on the first payment. Team plans and renewals are not covered.
Oncology care runs alongside pathology dictation for biopsy and resection reports, radiology dictation for staging scans and surgical dictation for resections. For cost comparisons, see Dragon Medical One pricing and alternatives.