Nuance and Microsoft announce partnership to tackle clinical burnout

Nuance has partnered with Microsoft to help speed up the delivery of ambient clinical intelligence (ACI) technologies and reduce clinical burnout.

ACI is built on Nuance’s Dragon Medical One cloud platform and speech recognition and natural language understanding technology.

The partnership will combine Nuance’s expertise in conversational AI, clinical documentation and decision-support solutions for healthcare with Microsoft’s strengths in delivering cloud and AI solutions.

Dragon Medical One, a secure, cloud-based speech platform for physicians and other clinicians, already helps to securely document patient care in an EHR. The software has been deployed in NHS trusts in the UK, such as Homerton University Hospital NHS Trust which went live in November 2018.

The ACI platform has already begun to roll out to select customers in beta form, and the companies plan to formally introduce the joint technology in early 2020 across several key specialties, as well as expanding capabilities for additional specialties over the following 24 months.

Mark Benjamin, Nuance CEO, said: “The Microsoft partnership will accelerate our ability to solve healthcare’s most pressing challenges — together.

“The ambient technologies we will jointly deliver can improve productivity and professional satisfaction, while empowering doctors to focus on what they do best: take care of patients.”

The two companies will also work with their electronic health record partners to improve the clinician experience.

Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, said, “We have an incredible opportunity to use advances in cloud and AI technology to transform healthcare delivery.

“Together with Nuance, we will apply the power of Azure and Azure AI to this challenge, with the aim of improving the day-to-day life of first-line healthcare workers everywhere — so they can provide better care.”