At IACP this year, I got a chance to talk to Eric Guinazzo, of Nuance Communications. As you know, Nuance is the company that produces Dragon NaturallySpeaking. You probably also know that I am a power user of their products. What they introduced to me at IACP was a natural fit for their product line, but very unique in the law enforcement world.
Nuance has launched Dragon Law Enforcement. It’s not just a dictation product specific to law enforcement users – you know, with the unique vocabulary, etc. This product was designed to allow officers to focus on things that are hazardous to them, and leave the nonhazardous stuff to automation.
As you know, Dragon NaturallySpeaking products have two different components to the speech recognition. The components are dictation and command. The former takes human speech and turns it into text, using complex algorithms. The latter takes human speech and turns it into commands to tell the computer what to do. You should also know that I am dictating this article while occasionally telling the mouse to go somewhere else, click on something, or turn the dictation on or off.
Nuance took this capability a little further. Since reports already integrate into Records Management Systems (RMS), Nuance took the commands and created a pathway for reports to be integrated as certain activities happen. This is done using Dragon Law Enforcement open-ended custom commands, DragonTemplates, and a macro recorder, which saves a series of actions (keystrokes and mouse clicks) under a single voice command. This can allow an officer to open a pre-loaded agency specific template for reporting.
You see, it isn’t just custom vocabularies, it’s industry specific customization. In fact, the best part of Dragon Law Enforcement are other in patrol car commands like text to speech license plate lookup and commands that drive in car documentation.
Dragon Law Enforcement is easily deployed to any size agency. It is scalable and easily managed. Who would’ve known that a dictation product could aid in officer safety?
