Medical dictation software that never leaves the room.
VoiceNote turns your voice into finished clinical notes on your own computer — patient audio is transcribed locally and wiped the moment it becomes text. No cloud vendor, no BAA, no per-clinician subscription. It types into any EHR field, learns your terminology, and keeps working with no signal at all.
“58-year-old male, review of hypertension. BP 138/86 today, tolerating amlodipine well. Continue current dose; recheck U&Es and repeat BP in six weeks.”
Why VoiceNote for clinical dictation
Patient audio never leaves the room
Transcription runs on your computer and the recording is discarded the instant it becomes text. No cloud vendor, no data-processing agreement to negotiate — and no BAA, because we never receive PHI.
It learns your terminology
Drug names, procedures and the abbreviations you use — correct each once and it's kept for good. “Amlodipine”, not “a lot of peein’.”
Between rooms, offline
It keeps working with no connection at all, so it's just as fast on a ward with no signal as it is at your desk.
What medical dictation software actually has to get right
Four things, in practice. It has to be accurate on clinical language — a tool that writes "metoprolol" as "met a pro law" costs more time than it saves. It has to be fast enough to use between patients, not something you batch up for the end of the day. It has to work where you chart — inside the EHR you actually use, not a separate app you paste from. And in medicine specifically, it has to answer one question your compliance officer will ask before anyone else does: where does the patient's voice go?
Most dictation products answer that last question the same way: to our servers, and here's a Business Associate Agreement about it. VoiceNote answers it differently — nowhere. That difference shapes everything else on this page.
The privacy problem with cloud medical dictation
When dictation runs in the cloud, every note you speak — names, diagnoses, medications, the details patients tell you in confidence — is uploaded, processed on someone else's hardware, and subject to their retention and security. HIPAA can accommodate that, but only with paperwork and trust: the vendor becomes a Business Associate, you sign a BAA, and their breach becomes your breach notification.
VoiceNote removes the arrangement instead of papering it. The speech model runs on your computer; the note is written on your computer; the audio is deleted the moment it's transcribed. There is no data flow to assess, no vendor on your risk register, and no BAA — because there's no business associate. The HIPAA guide walks through how that maps to the Security Rule safeguards, and it's the page most compliance reviewers ask for first.
How it compares
| VoiceNote | Dragon Medical One | Cloud AI scribes | Built-in voice typing | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where patient audio goes | Nowhere — stays on your machine | Nuance/Microsoft cloud | Vendor cloud | Varies; often cloud |
| BAA required | No — no PHI ever received | Yes | Yes | Usually unsuitable for PHI |
| Pricing model | One-time, $49–$99 | Per-clinician subscription, hundreds/year | Per-clinician subscription | Free |
| Works offline | Fully | No — cloud service | No | Sometimes |
| Learns your terminology | Yes — permanently, on-device | Yes | Partially | No |
| Works in any EHR field | Yes — types at the cursor | Yes (supported apps) | Usually generates documents to paste | Yes |
It works in your EHR because it isn't "integrated" with anything
VoiceNote doesn't connect to your EHR — it types into it. Hold the hotkey, speak, and the finished text lands wherever your cursor is, exactly as if you'd typed it. That means it works in Epic, Oracle Health (Cerner), athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, MEDITECH, your pathology system, your letters, and plain Word — with nothing for IT to install server-side, no interface engine, and nothing that breaks when the EHR updates.
It also means dictation isn't the only place it helps. Referral letters in Outlook, MDT notes, teaching material, that email to the practice manager — the same hotkey works in every window.
A week in, it writes like you chart
The first day, you'll correct a few terms — a drug name it misheard, a consultant's surname, an abbreviation your specialty uses. Each correction becomes a permanent rule, applied on your machine, every time after. Clinicians tend to hit the point where notes come out clean somewhere in the first week, because the vocabulary you actually use is narrower than it feels: your formulary, your procedures, your colleagues.
Everything it learns stays on the device, visible in the app — you can review it, pause it, or wipe it. The learning is the point, but so is the custody.
What VoiceNote is not
Honesty is cheaper than a refund. VoiceNote is not an ambient AI scribe — it doesn't sit in the consultation, listen to the conversation, and draft a SOAP note by itself. You dictate the note; it writes what you say, cleanly, where your cursor is. (Its Meetings feature can transcribe and summarise a call on-device — case conferences, telehealth debriefs — but it's a note-taker, not a documentation agent.) And meeting capture is Windows-first today, with Mac coming; dictation itself runs on both.
Questions clinicians ask
Is VoiceNote HIPAA compliant?
VoiceNote supports HIPAA compliance by architecture: transcription and writing happen on your own computer, so Protected Health Information never reaches us or any cloud. There is no such thing as an official "HIPAA-certified" app — what matters is that no third party handles PHI, and with VoiceNote none does. Your compliance officer still owns the workstation side: encryption, access control, backups.
Do I need a Business Associate Agreement to use it?
No. HIPAA requires a BAA when a vendor creates, receives, maintains or transmits PHI on your behalf. VoiceNote does none of those — nothing you dictate is ever sent to us — so the BAA requirement doesn't attach. Cloud dictation services do receive PHI, which is why they make you sign one first.
Does it work with Epic, Cerner or my EHR?
Yes — with any of them, because VoiceNote isn't integrated with your EHR at all. It types into whatever field your cursor is in, exactly as if you'd typed it: Epic, Oracle Health (Cerner), athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, MEDITECH, a local system, or plain Word. No interface engine, no IT project.
Can it handle drug names and clinical terminology?
Out of the box it's good; with a week of use it's yours. Correct a term once — amlodipine, metoprolol, cholecystectomy, your registrar's surname — and it's kept for good, applied every time you say it. You can also pre-load your dictionary with the vocabulary you use most.
Does it work offline — on wards or home visits?
Fully. The speech and writing models run on your computer, so nothing changes when there's no signal. Airplane mode is the honest test: switch it on and keep dictating.
How does the price compare with Dragon Medical One?
Dragon Medical One is a cloud subscription billed per clinician that runs into hundreds of dollars every year, and your audio is processed on Nuance's servers. VoiceNote is a one-time purchase ($49–$99) that runs on your machine. It is not an ambient AI scribe — you dictate the note — but for dictation it does the job for a fraction of the cost, privately.
Related
Back to the patient. Not the keyboard.
A small download, one hotkey, and your notes write themselves — privately, on your own machine.