Health IT

How Nuance’s AI-powered virtual assistant aims to assist the care team

The Massachusetts company's Dragon Medical Virtual Assistant is focused on clinical documentation and translating a clinician's speech into information that goes into the EHR.

Nuance Communications, a computer software company headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, is bringing artificial intelligence to the medical realm.

The organization touches various industries, from automotive to financial services to healthcare.

“Our vision is very simple: enabling the care team … to take care of patients without technology getting in the way,” Satish Marpuri, executive vice president and general manager of Nuance Healthcare, said in a phone interview.

Physicians, he said, are starting to become data entry clerks. Within today’s medical system, there is a significant burden put on the care team as far as documentation is concerned.

“Where Nuance Healthcare sees the next frontier is around … bringing artificial intelligence to those scenarios to solve the burden on the physicians,” Marpuri added.

The company has thus developed various products to aid clinicians in this manner. Its flagship product is the Dragon Medical suite of solutions, Marpuri noted. The products are focused on clinical documentation and translate a doctor’s speech into a narrative that goes into the EHR.

About a year ago, Nuance expanded its portfolio by launching a new solution: the Dragon Medical Virtual Assistant. The tool, which is powered by artificial intelligence, continues the clinical documentation work of Nuance’s other products. More specifically, it can understand sophisticated conversational dialogue and has capabilities that automate high-value clinical workflows.

Earlier this year, the Massachusetts company integrated its virtual assistant platform into the Epic EHR system.

Marpuri pointed out that this effort is part of Nuance’s goal of deeply integrating its technology into the physician’s workflow. In addition to Epic, the company has partnerships with IT vendors like Allscripts, Cerner and Meditech.

Diving deeper into Nuance’s work with the Wisconsin-based EHR vendor, the companies have a few joint innovations. Doctors using Epic Haiku can now ask for patient information, medication lists and lab results through Nuance’s virtual assistant technology. Staff using Epic Cadence, a scheduling tool, can converse with Nuance’s virtual assistant to set up, search for and cancel patient appointments.

Nuance also has a smart speaker in development, which is connected to the Dragon Medical cloud. It is geared toward complex medical conversations and ambient speech use cases.

Finally, the Massachusetts company is working with entities like Partners HealthCare in Boston and Nvidia, a company with roots in the gaming world. Through the collaboration, they are bringing AI to radiologists at the point of care. The aim is to have AI algorithms that scan through medical images so the radiologist can quickly see which patients need specific types of care.

Photo: MF3d, Getty Images

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