Nuance unveils AI-powered virtual assistant solution for healthcare

Nuance virtual assistant for healthcare

Nuance Communications is joining the market of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered virtual assistants with a solution of its own, designed specifically for healthcare providers.

Based on the Nuance Virtual Assistant platform, the newly announced Dragon Medical Virtual Assistant aims to further streamline a wide variety of clinical workflows for the 500,000 clinicians that already rely on Dragon Medical every day for their clinical documentation. As such, it will offer “sophisticated conversational dialogues” and pre-built capabilities that automate high-value clinical workflows.

This solution, according to Nuance’s survey, directly addresses the belief by 80% of 10,000 U.S. clinicians that say virtual assistants would drastically change healthcare by the end of 2018.

Nuance’s virtual assistant solution includes industry-leading voice recognition technology designed for healthcare (Dragon Medical), voice biometrics and text-to-speech, “unparalleled integrations and strategic healthcare IT relationships” that span major EHR systems and platforms, prototype smart speaker customized for healthcare provider settings and use cases, and the secure environment that leverages the HITRUST CSF certified Microsoft Azure cloud hosting platform.

According to new research from experts at the University of Wisconsin and the American Medical Association, primary care physicians spend more than half of their workday at a computer screen performing data entry and other tasks with EHRs. This new virtual assistant will utilize Nuance’s conversational AI capabilities to optimize the experience healthcare providers have with their EHRs, freeing clinicians to focus on the patient and thereby providing higher quality care, a better patient experience and lowering physician burnout.

“Nuance is helping to create a world where clinicians can refocus on their patients without technology getting in the way,” said Peter Durlach, senior vice president of strategy, Healthcare Division, Nuance. “Our healthcare virtual assistant and smart speaker innovations are designed to enable the clinician to get back to why they went to medical school — to take care of people. By spending more time with patients, the quality of care will increase, patients will be more satisfied with their experience and clinicians will be less burnt out.”

Nuance healthcare solutions capture and communicate more than 300 million patient stories each year helping more than 500,000 clinicians in 10,000 healthcare organizations globally.