Nuance and Microsoft announce the integration of Dragon Ambient eXperience and Microsoft Teams for virtual telehealth consults

BURLINGTON, Mass., and REDMOND, Wash., Sept. 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Nuance Communications Inc. and Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday announced Nuance Dragon® Ambient eXperience™ (DAX™), an ambient clinical intelligence (ACI) solution, is now integrated into Microsoft Teams to broadly scale virtual consults aimed at increasing physician wellness and providing better patient health outcomes. As a Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare partner and part of a broader partnership between the two companies, the integration enables physicians to activate Nuance DAX from within their Microsoft Teams workflows, so they can focus on the patient while the AI securely captures the details of the virtual visit in context — creating clinical documentation that writes itself™.

Innovated by Nuance and Microsoft, the integration of Nuance DAX and Microsoft Teams for telehealth is part of the ongoing strategic partnership to accelerate the adoption of ACI solutions to improve healthcare experiences by reducing administrative workloads that lead to physician burnout. This telehealth workflow solution built on Microsoft Teams:

• Synthesizes physician-patient conversations during virtual visits through Microsoft Teams, allowing physicians to remain focused on the patient instead of taking notes on the computer.
• Incorporates patient data securely with contextual information from the electronic health record (EHR) to auto-populate a complete and highly accurate clinical note for physicians to review directly within the patient’s medical record. The physician always remains in control.

Research shows that the pandemic has accelerated virtual consults and expanded access to care, while physician burnout remains an important concern facing the healthcare industry today.  Healthcare providers are rapidly scaling virtual health consults, with a reported 50- to 175-fold increase in telehealth patient volumes since the onset of the pandemic.¹ This rapid step change in technology adoption suggests that now is the time for the healthcare industry to make improvements in information exchange, broadening access and integration of technology for improved access to care for better health outcomes and increased efficiencies in the healthcare system.

“The dramatic growth of telehealth represents a unique opportunity to use Nuance DAX ambient clinical intelligence technology to transform healthcare experiences and define what healthcare providers and consumers should expect from advanced digital health solutions,” said Diana Nole, executive vice president, and general manager of healthcare, Nuance. “Our strategic partnership with Microsoft, which led to this rapid integration of Nuance DAX with Microsoft Teams for telehealth, illustrates the ongoing importance of combining our technologies, domain expertise and market reach to develop advanced cloud-based conversational AI solutions that keep the health of clinicians and patients front and center in healthcare delivery.”

“Telehealth has grown in just a few months from being an infrequently used, specialized solution prior to the pandemic to becoming core to how we deliver care today and in the future. The integrated Nuance-Microsoft Teams solution will be game-changer for our clinicians and patients alike,” said Dr. William Silver, medical director, Triangle Region EmergeOrtho. “This integration brings us the ease of use, reliability and security of the Microsoft Teams platform for healthcare, and the ability to automatically capture and document patient-physician encounters with Nuance DAX to significantly ease the burden of clinical documentation.”

“Through our strategic partnership with Nuance, we are combining the best in Nuance’s conversational AI technology with Microsoft Teams, Azure and Azure AI to accelerate and scale the development and adoption of innovative solutions that emphasize the essential and personal aspect of quality healthcare between a physician and patient,” said Gregory Moore, M.D., Ph.D., corporate vice president, Microsoft Health. “This important milestone and the integration of Microsoft Teams within the Nuance DAX solution will empower front-line care providers to positively transform the patient care experience.”

Nuance DAX leverages and extends the proven power of Nuance Dragon Medical, relied upon by over 550,000 physicians globally, and is already delivering significant outcomes, including a 20% increase in patient throughput, 50 to 75% reduction in clinical documentation time, an 88% increase in provider satisfaction scores for clinical documentation, and patient consent rates of over 90%.

The Nuance DAX solution is built on top of Microsoft Azure, a highly secure HITRUST CSF-certified platform, compliant with the HITECH Act, and has implemented the physical, technical and administrative safeguards required by HIPAA. As part of the strategic collaboration between the two companies, Nuance has migrated the majority of its on-premises internal infrastructure and hosted products to Microsoft Azure and is a Microsoft Office 365 customer for its more than 8,500 employees worldwide, empowering them with the latest in collaboration and communication tools, including Microsoft Teams.

The companies will demonstrate the integrated DAX-Teams telehealth solution available to customers for private preview at the Microsoft Ignite virtual conference Sept. 22-24, 2020. Those interested in learning more about the Nuance DAX and Microsoft Teams integration should visit www.nuance.com/DAXTeams or watch this video.

About Nuance Healthcare

Nuance provides intelligent systems that support a more natural and insightful approach to clinical documentation, freeing clinicians to spend more time caring for patients. Nuance healthcare solutions capture, improve and communicate more than 300 million patient stories each year, helping more than 500,000 clinicians in 10,000 global healthcare organizations to drive meaningful clinical and financial outcomes. Nuance’s award-winning clinical speech recognition, medical transcription, CDI, coding, quality and medical imaging solutions provide a more complete and accurate view of patient care.

About Nuance Communications Inc.

Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN) is the pioneer and leader in conversational AI innovations that bring intelligence to everyday work and life. The company delivers solutions that understand, analyze, and respond to people – amplifying human intelligence to increase productivity and security. With decades of domain and AI expertise, Nuance works with thousands of organizations globally across healthcare, financial services, telecommunications, government, and retail – to create stronger relationships and better experiences for their customers and workforce. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

¹ See “Telehealth: A quarter-trillion-dollar post-COVID-19 reality?” McKinsey & Company, May 2020 

Trademark reference: Nuance and the Nuance logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Nuance Communications Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.

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SOURCE Microsoft Corporation