Nuance Communications and Epic are joining forces to create more access and job opportunities for disabled persons scheduling medical appointments. A hands-free virtual assistant was the first solution demonstrated to use Nuance’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology and Epic’s Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. It was made with nearly 20 million U.S. military veterans in mind, enabling them to perform such intuitive voice-driven interactions as scheduling an appointment in seconds.

Nuance has delivered speech recognition technology to the U.S. Veteran’s Health Administration System through long-standing relationships across the health system, which includes 14,000 physicians across 152 hospitals supporting more than 8 million patients annually. The company’s next-generation clinical documentation solutions also support all branches of the Department of Defense at hundreds of facilities across the U.S and overseas.

“This is an important invaluable initiative to help our nation’s veterans get what they need faster and to become more independent,” Satish Maripuri, executive vice president and general manager of the Healthcare Division at Nuance, said in a statement. “It is an honor and a privilege to do this work on their behalf. We are very focused on such deeply-embedded solutions to drive value for our clients.”

Epic president Carl Dvorak is also pleased with the partnership. He said: “By going above and beyond what is required by Section 508, Epic is focused on delivering a completely new experience to those veterans that have suffered physical disabilities due to their service to our country.”

The two companies have demonstrated the hands-free virtual assistant during the recent HIMSS event in Orlando, Florida.