What You Should Know:
– Nuance acquires ambient AI healthcare voice assistant Saykara, Inc. to bring complementary AI technology and engineering talent to conversational AI and ambient clinical intelligence market leader.
– Kara’s AI-powered healthcare voice assistant can be used during a physician-patient encounter without any voice commands, promising to eliminate up to 100% of after-hours charting and records entry
Nuance Communications, Inc. today announced the acquisition of Saykara, Inc., a Seattle-based AI-powered healthcare virtual assistant that simplifies the documentation process for physicians, allowing them to spend more time treating patients and less time on administrative tasks.
The acquisition underscores Nuance’s ongoing expansion of market and technical leadership in conversational artificial intelligence (AI) and ambient clinical intelligence (ACI) solutions that reduce clinician burnout, enhance patient experiences, and improve overall health system financial integrity.
Founded in 2015 by former Nuance executive Harjinder Sandhu, Saykara [pronounced say-‘care-uh] is working to combat the epidemic of physician burnout that has surfaced from increasingly burdensome documentation requirements and time spent on electronic health record (EHR) data entry. The AI voice assistant Named Kara listens to physician-patient conversations, then interprets and transforms the salient content required for notes, orders, referrals and more, and enters both structured and unstructured data directly to the EHR. Kara is specialty agnostic, scalable at the enterprise level and available through a software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscription. Data shows that time spent charting is reduced by an average of 70%, after-hours (“pajama time”) charting is completely eliminated, and note quality and completeness is enhanced by 25%.
“I welcome the opportunity to rejoin the market leader in conversational AI and ambient clinical intelligence, and the impressive Nuance research and development team – especially at this important juncture in the development and adoption of these AI-powered healthcare innovations,” said Saykara Founder and CEO Harjinder Sandhu. “We are very familiar with Nuance’s advanced technology, domain expertise, and world-class technical team and share the company’s mission to make what matters to alleviate the clinical documentation burden on clinicians around the world.”
As part of the acquisition, Sandhu and Saykara’s team of leading engineers, machine learning experts, and experienced technology executives will join Nuance’s research and development team. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
