Nuance’s Speech Recognition Helps Healthcare Providers Achieve Their Goals
Expanded organisation and product range for fast clinical documentation; focus on reducing patient waiting times and greater efficiency
London, UK, 30 June, 2009 — Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) has strengthened its position in the healthcare markets of the United Kingdom and Ireland. The company now boasts a comprehensive portfolio of speech-enabled documentation solutions for healthcare that addresses the full spectrum of documentation requirements in these markets. Together with its partners, Nuance is aiming to establish speech recognition as the standard method for capturing information across all healthcare facilities.
“Hospitals in the UK produce an estimated 206 million reports per year. General practitioners add another 184 million reports. Transcription of medical dictation consumes half a billion of the National Health Services’ (NHS) budget. Add to that the increasing healthcare requirements of an aging society, and it becomes obvious that healthcare providers must act in order to ensure high-quality care while keeping costs affordable. This is where Nuance’s healthcare solutions come into play, as they help reduce the costs associated with an ever increasing volume of documentation,” says Marcel Wassink, Vice President of Nuance’s healthcare business in EMEA.
New set-up: A global player right around the corner
Together with a network of integration partners and value added resellers, Nuance’s organisational structure spans the entire UK and Irish nations to reassure its customers of easy access to its technology, solutions and services. A network of more than 20 integration and distribution partners is now serving the UK and Irish markets.
“Nuance customers clearly benefit from the innovation potential of a global player who can boast world-wide resources for developing new technologies and solutions. At the same time, a strong local team ensures that the individual needs and requirements of our customers are taken care of professionally. The many solutions that are based on the Nuance Healthcare Platform deliver perfectly tailored healthcare speech recognition for the NHS, private hospitals and GP offices,” says, Dewinder Bhachu, Director Healthcare Solutions in the UK.
Expanded product portfolio: A shoe that fits — everybody
Nuance provides tailored speech solutions to all types of healthcare organisation — from individual doctors’ practices to large hospitals and regional care networks. In addition, Nuance’s integration platform delivers technologies to speech-enable third-party health IT systems.
- Nuance Healthcare Integration Platform: Software Development Kits (SDK)
The SpeechMagic and Dragon SDKs, together supporting 25 recognition languages, allow health IT providers to embed speech recognition in their applications. Globally, more than 100 companies work with Nuance technologies, including leading healthcare firms such as Agfa, Carestream, General Electrics, iSoft, Philips, Sectra and Siemens.
- Nuance Healthcare Solutions: Dragon Medical
Dragon Medical 10 is the latest version of Nuance's hugely successful out-of-the-box speech recognition software. It allows doctors to simply dictate anywhere – in e-mails, Word documents or information systems. Dragon Medical is geared towards primary care trusts and clinics, where it can speed up the editing and signing of medical documents. It can be purchased through a network of value added resellers.
“Hospitals which set up a central service for documentation management need a different solution from small workgroups or practitioners looking for an easy way to reduce administration costs in their practice. The needs of these physicians have been specifically addressed in the recently launched Dragon Medical 10 software - the most widely used speech recognition system in medicine today. The success of Dragon in professional environments is sustained by our committed network of Value Added Resellers who provide helpful services such as consulting, installation, training and hardware support, to make the most of your investment”, says Martin Eberhart, Business Manager EMEA for Dragon Medical.
Background Information: Speech recognition in healthcare
Various health policy initiatives have been geared towards reducing waiting times in the NHS. One of these is the 18-week referral to treatment pathway, which sets a maximum time of 18 weeks from the point of initial referral up to the start of any treatment necessary in consultant-led care settings. Indeed, the average wait for treatment on the NHS has come down to 8.6 weeks in recent years. For heart patients, for example, it has decreased from 14 to 7 weeks between March 2007 and January 2009. But there are still many institutions that struggle to meet the target and that thus have need to increase efficiency further.
Speech-enabled healthcare organisations, such as the Royal Free Hospital in London confirm the massive efficiency gains brought by Nuance solutions: “Speech recognition allows the department to ensure delivery of reports to referrers, in some instances within minutes of the completion of an exam.” says Simone Towie, Head of Radiology at the Royal Free Hospital.
HCA International, central London’s premier healthcare facility, has reduced average report creation times from 24 hours to two minutes and 40 seconds. Kaye Bonython, Imaging Informatics Programme Manager says: “This is even more surprising, as we had to deal with concerns. They thought speech recognition would result in too much time added to their reporting schedule. But the initial negative thoughts simply vanished once they saw that the technology had progressed to a state where it could really improve the timing.”
Melanie Hiorns, Consultant Radiologist and Chair of Radiology at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust (GOSH) in London highlights that they have seen “an improvement in quality, a reduction in turnaround time and an increase in patient safety as a consequence of the desktop integration. While the transition to speech recognition can be tough at the beginning, the rewards are enormous.”
Dr. Olive Robb, Radiologist at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary says: “We were completely surprised by the lack of difficulties with the implementation and acceptance of our new speech recognition system. The technology has reached the level which allows doctors the full responsibility of report creation.”
Nuance’s Healthcare
Nuance’s Healthcare solutions — used by more than 3000 hospitals and 250 000 physicians worldwide — provide a comprehensive family of speech-driven clinical documentation and communication solutions that enable healthcare provider organisations to reduce operating costs, increase reimbursement, and enhance patient care and safety. For more information about all of Nuance’s Healthcare solutions in the United Kingdom and Ireland, please visit: www.nuance.co.uk/healthcare
About Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance (NASDAQ: NUAN) is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications and professional services. For more information, please visit www.nuance.co.uk.
Copyright 2009 Nuance Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. Nuance, the Nuance logo, SpeechMagicTM, powered by SpeechMagicTM, SpeechMagicTM Solution Builder, Dragon® Medical and The experience speaks for itselfTM are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.
1 Source: Press release: “Nuance Speech Recognition Used to Digitize Radiology Reporting at Royal Free Hospital in London”
2 Source: Case study: “Even faster”
3 Source: Case study: “The strongest link - Bringing legacy systems up to speed”
4 Source: Case study: “Putting radiologists in control of report creation”
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