For doctors

Dictation for doctors on a Mac

Loquen is medical dictation software for Mac, built by a doctor. Hold one key, say the note, let go: clean, punctuated text is pasted at your cursor in your EHR or any app with a text field, and in Private mode nothing you say leaves the computer.

Built by a physician who dictates every day

Loquen is made by Nilesh Desai, M.D., a practising internal-medicine physician in New Port Richey, Florida. Dr. Desai dictates notes every day, and the app is shaped by that work: the same exam paragraphs, the same drug names, the same sign-offs, over and over. In Dr. Desai’s words, “Medicine ships first because that is the job I know.”

People speak about 150 words a minute and type about 40.

How medical dictation on a Mac works with Loquen

• Hold one key: Globe (fn) by default, or right Option or right Command in Settings. Talk. Let go.
• Clean, punctuated text is pasted at the cursor in any app with a text field. Processing stays on your Mac; timing varies with dictation length, recognition engine and Mac.
• Double-tap the key for hands-free. Esc cancels with nothing pasted. If nothing is focused, Loquen copies the text and says so.

On-device, and what that means for patient notes

Speech to text and AI cleanup run on the Mac’s own chip. In Private mode, the default, nothing you say leaves the computer: no audio, no text. The initial approximately 2.2 GB model download carries no dictation. After setup, licence validation can send the licence key and an instance id, and update checks can send the app version; neither carries audio or text. There is no account, no telemetry, and no screenshots, ever.

Loquen normally keeps the 50 most recent recordings locally so Retry works; Keep all audio retains more. An original recording or transcript can remain in local History after a redacted paste until it is deleted. Enhanced mode is opt-in: it sends the text of a dictation, never the audio, to a cloud model you choose with your own API key. Any app, your EHR for example, can be kept in Private mode.

Built for HIPAA the simple way: patient notes never touch a server, so there is no server to trust. HIPAA compliance is about a practice’s whole workflow, so check with your compliance officer.

Privacy Mode, for text that leaves the chart

Hold a second key and Privacy Mode finds and replaces common identifiers before pasting: names, dates and ages, record and account numbers, phone numbers and emails, addresses. They become plain words, then cleanup rewrites the sentence so it reads naturally. The year of a birth date stays. A dictation full of identifiers comes out like this:

“The patient, born in 1962, was seen today for chest pain. A family member was notified by phone.”

You see every replacement marked. Return pastes it; Cmd-Z pastes the original. It is built around the categories HIPAA’s Safe Harbor method lists and runs on the computer.

A tool, not a compliance programme. Detection is not exhaustive. Review every result before sharing.

Medical vocabulary packs, every one included

A general speech model does not know medicine, so metoprolol comes out as “metropolis”. Loquen’s medical packs fix that: each entry swaps the common mishearings for the right term, and the AI cleanup is told not to “correct” pack terms back. Medical core alone is 2,307 terms, built around drug names, generic and brand. Pharmacology covers the long tail of drug classes. Then there is a pack for each specialty:

• Cardiology: 292 terms
• Emergency Medicine: 265 terms
• General Surgery: 223 terms
• Internal Medicine: 363 terms
• Neurology: 321 terms
• Obstetrics and Gynecology: 278 terms
• Orthopedics: 218 terms
• Pediatrics: 215 terms
• Psychiatry: 337 terms
• Radiology: 271 terms

The packs are English only so far. A pack is one plain JSON file, so anyone can write their own. Packs for law, accounting, engineering and the trades are planned.

Phrases for normal exams and sign-offs

A phrase is a named block of text. Say its name anywhere in a sentence and the whole block pastes, untouched by the AI. Say “loquen normal exam” and your normal exam lands exactly as you wrote it. Make one for a review of systems, a sign-off or the clinic address. Every specialty pack ships a starter set to begin from.

Works in a browser EHR and everything else

Loquen types wherever the cursor is: an EHR in the browser, Mail, iMessage, WhatsApp, Slack, Office, ChatGPT, Claude. Tone follows the app, formal in Mail and casual in chat, and you can set your own rules per app or site.

$19 once, against a medical subscription

List prices from each product’s own site, September 2026.

No subscription, no word limits. A 7-day free trial and a 14-day no-questions refund. One licence key works on up to two of your own Macs. Loquen needs an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) on macOS 15 or later; Intel Macs are not supported. Windows is being built; the waitlist lets you pick your platform.

Questions doctors ask

What does Loquen say about HIPAA?

Built for HIPAA the simple way: patient notes never touch a server, so there is no server to trust. HIPAA compliance is about a practice’s whole workflow, not one app, so check with your compliance officer before using any tool with patient information.

Does it work with my EHR?

If the EHR has a text field, yes. Loquen pastes at the cursor in any app with a text field, including an EHR in the browser. If nothing is focused, it copies the text and tells you.

Does it need the internet?

The initial approximately 2.2 GB model download needs the internet and carries no dictation. After setup, speech to text and cleanup run on the Mac; licence validation and update checks can use the network and carry no audio or text.

How does it compare with Dragon Medical One on price?

Loquen is $19 once, with every pack and updates included. Dragon Medical One lists at about $1,188 a year, or $99 a month. Both are list prices, September 2026.

Does Privacy Mode de-identify my notes?

No, and nothing can promise that. It finds and replaces common identifiers and shows you every replacement before it pastes. A tool, not a compliance programme. Detection is not exhaustive. Review every result before sharing.