Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN), the first to bring the power of the virtual assistant directly to consumers through mobile phones and customer service attendants, recently surveyed US doctors about the effect virtual assistants will have on healthcare. Overwhelmingly, 80 percent believe that within five years, virtual assistants will drastically change how they interact and use electronic health records (EHRs) and other healthcare apps, making them more efficient and freeing up time to spend on patients.

Doctors stated that mobile virtual assistants could impact healthcare most by helping them access information in EHRs, and navigate through the process using conversational commands. One out of three doctors spends 30 percent or more of their day on administrative duties — activities that could be redirected or removed using voice-enabled virtual assistants.

How will virtual assistants put the care back in healthcare?

• 65 percent say the top role for a virtual assistant: more accurate, timely information to support care or alert them to missing information in records.
• 73 percent expect virtual assistants could improve healthcare and patient engagement by helping to coordinate care between multiple caregivers.
• 80 percent believe virtual assistants will benefit patients most by engaging them in the process, prompting them to adhere to health advice and modifying behaviors.

“Mobile virtual assistants have the potential to reinvent the way we deliver patient care,” says Dr. Alireza Shafaie, Palo Alto Medical Foundation. “As a consumer, I already experience the value of mobile assistants, and would love to bring that natural, intelligence-based dialogue to my work as a primary care physician. For every one patient I see I have to communicate my recommendations in three different places. A mobile advisor that could do that on my behalf in one shot would give me back more time in what truly matters – time with my patients.”

One area of interest with physicians is intelligent, voice-driven, computerized physician order entry (CPOE) that uses more sophisticated reasoning for ordering medications, labs and radiology exams beyond mere speech. Healthcare developers can embed virtual assistants — ones that conduct meaningful conversations, interpret physician requests, ask for clarification and seamlessly manage changes in course of action much like their human equivalents — directly into any clinical app to enhance a variety of new and existing workflows, including CPOE.

Nuance is deeply invested in a new generation of sophisticated and powerful applications underpinned by voice and clinical language understanding (CLU) that reinvents the way doctors and patients experience healthcare, providing direct access to the healthcare information that matters most.

“The technology exists today in Nuance to create a more intuitive way for doctors and patients to coordinate care and improve efficiency through dialogue-driven intelligent systems that hear, understand and respond,” reports Joe Petro, senior vice president healthcare engineering and R&D, Nuance.

More than 500 global developers are already utilizing Nuance technology to humanize healthcare and fulfill the promise of virtual assistants in medicine. For a first glimpse of Nuance’s new healthcare virtual assistant project, codenamed “Florence,” visit booth #4025 at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Conference & Exhibits in New Orleans March 3 – 7, 2013.

To learn more, check out these resources:

• Will Virtual Assistants Propel the Future of Medicine? – Infographic: http://bit.ly/Ytb2LP
• Advancing the mHealth Ecosystem – Mobile guide: http://bit.ly/X6Nvma
• Nuance Healthcare Developer Portal – For healthcare developers looking to embed Nuance’s speech and clinical language understanding technology, visit here: http://bit.ly/YTxSuM

Nuance Healthcare
Nuance Healthcare, a division of Nuance Communications, is the market leader in creating clinical understanding solutions that drive smart, efficient decisions across healthcare. As the largest clinical documentation provider in the U.S., Nuance provides solutions and services that improve the entire clinical documentation process — from the capture of the complete patient record to clinical documentation improvement, coding, compliance and appropriate reimbursement. More than 450,000 physicians and 10,000 healthcare facilities worldwide leverage Nuance’s award-winning, voice-enabled clinical documentation and analytics solutions to support the physician in any clinical workflow and on any device. For more information, visit www.nuance.com/for-healthcare/index.htm.

Connect with Nuance Healthcare on Social Media:
For the Health of IT blog – www.nuancehealthcareblog.com
Twitter – https://twitter.com/NuanceHealth

Nuance Communications, Inc

Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) is a leading provider of voice and language 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 devices and systems. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications. For more information, please visit: http://www.nuance.com/

Nuance and the Nuance logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

The statements in this press release relating to future plans, events or services, are forward-looking statements which are subject to specific risks and uncertainties. There are a number of factors which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those indicated in such forward looking statements, including fluctuations in demand for the Nuance products, and the continued development of Nuance products. The reader is warned not to rely on these forward-looking statements without reservation, since these are simply reflections of the current situation. Nuance disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this document.