Nuance Communications on Tuesday announced that its Nuance Dragon Medical One clinical documentation software will now be made available through Microsoft Marketplace.ecosystem.

WHY IT MATTERS
Nuance cites data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Office of the Surgeon General that show increasing demands of electronic documentation is "driving nearly a third of physicians, nurses and other frontline healthcare workers to consider leaving the profession."

Some reports say the stats are even worse than that.

Meanwhile, physicians often spend twice as much time entering clinical notes and billing codes as they spend with patients – much of it during late-night "pajama time" at home.

Nuance says Dragon Medical One, which features speech recognition and voice-enabled workflow capabilities, can help save time by reducing time-consuming and repetitive tasks. It is able to capture clinical documentation as much as five times faster than typing, with 99% accuracy.

THE LARGER TREND
Nuance launched Dragon Medical One in 2016, and since then has unveiled other voice enabled clinical documentation and workflow tools in partnership with Microsoft. This past year, Microsoft acquired Nuance for $20 billion, in one of the largest health IT deals ever.

More recently, Nuance has announced deals to work more closely with electronic health record vendors such as Cerner, enabling deeper integration of ambient and conversational AI into its software to streamline EHR workflows.

In May, Nuance and Health Management Academy launched the AI Collaborative, a program designed for clinical and operational executives who lead their organizations' artificial intelligence investments.

Some healthcare analysts now see voice and ambient intelligence as the next "competitive battleground in healthcare's digital transformation."

ON THE RECORD
"Nuance Dragon Medical One improves our clinicians' efficiency by allowing them to create comprehensive, accurate notes simply by speaking," said Haleem Mohammed, Regional Medical Director at Miami-based Leon Medical Centers, in a quote from Nuance.

"The availability of Nuance Dragon Medical One through the Microsoft Marketplace helps to address the pressing issue of physician burnout on a broader scale and presents Microsoft partners with opportunities to add advanced conversational AI capabilities to the solutions they provide for healthcare professionals," added Diana Nole, general manager of the Nuance healthcare division.