Fusion Narrate vs. MModal Fluency Direct: A Comparison Between Speech Recognition Solutions
To help you get a better understanding of which speech recognition solution best fits your company, we’ve put together a comprehensive MModal vs. Fusion Narrate comparison. We’ll take a close look at the Solventum solution: Fluency Direct, and Dolbey solution: Fusion Narrate. In this article, we’ll provide an MModal dictation software comparison against Fusion Narrate to show what they have in common as well as the unique offerings of both.
MModal vs. Fusion Narrate
Integration
Both Fusion Narrate and MModal Fluency Direct allow for direct editor integration with Microsoft Word and web browsers.
Fusion Narrate has the option to lock an application in focus when recording starts, meaning that the designated application will stay in view even when other actions are taken or pop-ups appear. Any application, including browsers, can be locked in focus with Fusion Narrate. MModal Fluency Direct allows for an application lock to pre-configured applications, but the application does not remain in focus, and browsers are not supported.
Fusion Narrate allows for cursor context support for most applications to determine proper spacing and capitalization, while MModal is more limited in its cursor context capability.
Fusion Narrate can automatically remove field markers in target applications, which can be helpful when combined with text templates. MModal does not offer this functionality.
Speech Recognition
Fusion Narrate and MModal both offer cloud-based speech recognition, albeit with different speech engines. Both are capable of advanced numbered list formatting, built-in medical spell checking, support for spelling out small numbers, and allowing the user to select a specified speech topic based on their medical specialty.
In addition to these features, Fusion Narrate offers sentence modelling, which allows users and organizations to further improve accuracy through language modeling. Fusion Narrate also has the ability to show a preview of the recognized text and supports automatic all-caps text or all-numbers text to improve accuracy and legibility.
Speech Window
Fusion Narrate users can dictate into a separate speech window that supports formatted text including all upper-case letters. With MModal, formatted text is not supported. The Fusion Narrate speech window allows for spoken headers and fields with voice queues.
Voice Commands and Automation
Built-In Voice Commands
Fusion Narrate offers 100+ built-in voice commands which are compatible with nearly any desktop or web-based application.
Fusion Narrate and MModal built-in voice commands include pathology-specific commands for specimen formatting.
Both solutions offer users the ability to use SELECT commands directly in their application, however this is only possible in limited text editors with MModal.
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Custom Voice Shortcuts
Fusion Narrate offers an interactive shortcut list, including built-in and custom commands.
This shortcut list can be broken down in several sections with shortcut links, which allow shortcuts to be associated with linked values. For example, when dictating on a CT of the Abdomen procedure, the press of a microphone button could present a list of shortcuts linked to that type of procedure.
Shortcuts can also be given alternate shortcut names in Fusion Narrate – meaning several different voice commands can have the same function.
Fusion Narrate shortcuts can use conditional logic to build decision-based shortcut actions.
One of the key shortcut features in Fusion Narrate is Browser Automation – which allows users to record actions in Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge and replay those actions at will with a voice shortcut.
Fusion Narrate also offers patented Vision Click shortcuts, which use image capture and fast searching to perform an action across different resolutions and screen sizes.
Other features exclusive to Fusion Narrate are creating custom browser scripts to perform actions or gather data, configurable and scriptable speech grammar-based shortcuts, and the ability to play sound shortcuts with text-to-speech voices.
Both Fusion Narrate and MModal Fluency Direct allow for application-specific shortcuts. Both solutions have the ability to configure multi-step shortcuts and have support for VBScript-based shortcuts.
Fusion Narrate also offers support for AutoIt scripted shortcuts.
Fusion Narrate Shortcut Builder
Templates
Fusion Narrate supports insert text shortcuts with formatted text, including all upper-case letters, into any window. This is not possible with MModal, as formatted text is not supported.
Fusion Narrate also allows users to populate templates with field data from another system and link shortcuts to a data element such as the current procedure code.
Additional templating features in Fusion Narrate include stop fields, drop downs, multi-select fields, toggle fields, required fields, and embedded dynamic text based on option selection.
Compatibility
Microphone Support
MModal supports the Olympus RecMic II and Philips SpeechMike, with configurable button support.
Fusion Narrate supports the Olympus RecMic II, Philips SpeechMike, Nuance PowerMic II, II, and 4, and many other microphones, including headset, tabletop, built-in, and mobile microphones. Microphones with buttons can be configured within the Fusion Narrate client. The microphone recording level can also be automatically adjusted with Fusion Narrate.
Mobile Device Support
Fusion Narrate and MModal Fluency Direct both offer iOS and Android speech keyboards. MModal does require the use of a separate pop-up text window. Both applications also offer wireless microphones for Android and iOS.
Virtual Desktop Support
Both applications offer support for running as a Citrix application with USB microphone, support for running over RDP with USB microphone, and VMWare Horizon support. Director Editor integration is also possible over Citrix and RDP.
Mac Support
MModal Fluency has a macOS client, while Fusion Narrate is not natively compatible with Mac but can be used through a virtual machine or a virtual desktop infrastructure such as Parallels.
Tablet and Other Peripheral Device Support
Fusion Narrate also has integrated and customizable tablet controls and support for foot pedals.
Administration
Both Fusion Narrate and MModal Fluency Direct offer an admin console, allowing listen access to each recording and voice command for troubleshooting. The MModal admin console, however, has limited functionality while Fusion Narrate offers configurable storage for recordings and voice commands.
Similarly, both applications allow admins to configure other users’ microphone, foot pedal, function key, and other settings, as well as set defaults for new users, but MModal has limited functionality compared to Fusion Narrate.
Both applications allow users to export custom commands or shortcuts. Both also allow admins to manage organization-level and user-level shortcuts, however MModal only allows for this within the admin console, while Fusion Narrate has extended configurability options within the client.
In Fusion Narrate, administrator-only users can configure and test voice commands without the need for a separate license. Both administrators and users have access to shortcut revision history and voice command/shortcut usage statistics. The command/shortcut usage statistics are also available in-client.
Fusion Narrate also offers more detailed reporting than MModal, with reporting to see the software version of each workstation, reporting for time saved using shortcuts and commands for users and administrators, reporting to see the number of currently logged-in users, and speech recognition accuracy reporting.
Fusion Narrate users can also easily access the advanced settings within the client.
Searching for speech recognition software?
Start recording your dictations accurately with our easy-to-use platform, Fusion Narrate.
Customization
User Interface
Fusion Narrate offers several user interface customization options, including multiple sizes and formats of the main user interface window to select from – expanded or collapsed view, as well as small, medium, and large window size. The window can also be minimized.
The main window, known as the Action Bar, also has a light theme and a dark theme, as well as a setting for users with color vision deficiency. There are also transparency display settings for the Action Bar.
There are several modes and indicators available within Fusion Narrate, including Direct Editor mode, numeric-only mode, all caps mode, and application-lock mode, which are displayed in the Action Bar.
Transcription
Both Fusion Narrate and MModal offer the ability to record and send dictations to medical transcription directly from the desktop application. Both also offer integration with a full-featured back-end transcription system. For Fusion Narrate, this back-end transcription system is Fusion Narrate Text.
Fusion Narrate offers scribe support through a third-party vendor, ScribeEMR. Solventum offers scribe and ambient speech support through Fluency Align.
Support
Fusion Narrate and MModal Fluency Direct both offer a built-in tutorial and setup guide, a ‘contact us’ button built-in to contact technical support, and a shortcut and command list. Fusion Narrate offers an extensive online help manual for users and administrators; MModal offers similar documentation but is more limited. Both solutions also offer diagnostic logging for technical support. With Fusion Narrate diagnostic logging, users have the ability to send and admins to request logs.
Fusion Narrate also offers a built-in internet bandwidth tester.
Installation
Fusion Narrate offers a web-based, 20 MB install without requirement for local admin rights. MModal Fluency Direct requires a much larger 6 GB install due to its local recognition engine; this installation does require local admin rights.
Fusion Narrate supports XCOPY and MSI installation methods, while MModal does not.
Fusion Narrate also offers optional auto-updates from the cloud.
Authentication
Fusion Narrate offers single sign-on with trusted Windows authentication, LDAP authentication, Microsoft Azure AD authentication, Google authentication, and Okta authentication. MModal currently allows for Microsoft Azure AD authentication with pre-configuration. Fusion Narrate can also secure cache credentials (non-LDAP and SSO).
Users can automatically start and sign in to Fusion Narrate when logging into Windows, which is not possible in MModal Fluency Direct.
Both MModal and Fusion Narrate allows for sites to use the same username as other sites; MModal does require pre-configured site identifiers for this functionality.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What are the best MModal alternatives?
Of the available MModal Fluency Direct alternatives, Fusion Narrate is the most cost-effective, customizable, and comprehensive solution available.
- Are Fusion Narrate or MModal Mac-compatible?
MModal is not compatible with Mac devices out-of-the-box. Fusion Narrate is also not directly compatible with Mac devices. It is possible to use desktop virtualization software like Parallels to utilize these speech recognition solutions on a Mac computer.
To read more, and compare Dragon Medical One vs. M*Modal and Fusion Narrate, please view our comprehensive cloud-based speech recognition for healthcare comparison article.
