What You Should Know:
– Nuance Communications Inc. and Microsoft Corp. announced that Nuance Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX), an ambient clinical intelligence (ACI) solution, is now integrated into Microsoft Teams for virtual health consults.
– The ongoing strategic partnership between Microsoft and Nuance aims to combat burnout while supporting the telehealth movement by improving healthcare experiences—for patients and physicians—with seamlessly integrated technology.
Nuance Communications Inc. and Microsoft Corp. on 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™.
Nuance/Microsoft Teams Integration Details
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.
Pandemic Underscores Importance of Virtual Consults
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. 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.”
Nuance DAX Solution
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.
