Nuance Communications and Meditech have announced a partnership to provide AI-powered virtual assistants to ease clinician workflows.
The companies plan to integrate Nuance’s Dragon virtual assistant platform with Meditech’s Expanse electronic health record (EHR) solution in order to provide the AI-powered tools. Through the integration, the companies hope to enhance clinician workflows by automating high-value clinical and administration tasks so physicians can spend more time improving patient experiences.
Last year at HIMSS18, Nuance announced a partnership with Epic to integrate the AI-powered virtual assistant platform into Epic’s EHR.
"In the past decade, virtual assistants have become more and more ingrained in our everyday lives. Meditech is excited to bring the power of Nuance’s proven expertise in virtual assistants to the Meditech community through Expanse,” Hoda Sayed-Friel, Meditech executive vice president, said in a statement. “Using this seamless integration, providers can more efficiently and conveniently engage with the EHR using a conversational user interface.”
The virtual assistant-enabled workflows were showcased during the 2018 Physician and CIO Forum and were able to understand, analyze and respond to human language, according to a press release. Some tasks the virtual assistants could perform included:
- Conversationally retrieving patient lists
- Searching patient charts for lab results, vital signs and medications using a more natural dialogue
- Queueing orders through intuitive voice-driven workflows
“Clinicians want technology that is easy to use and that gives them more time back in their day to spend with the patients they care for,” Peter Durlach, senior vice president of strategy and new business development with Nuance Communications’ healthcare division, said in a statement.
“Nuance is building a future where care teams can utilize the next generation of Dragon Medical cloud capabilities to become even more productive, better informed and better served through the use of advanced conversational AI technologies.”
Danielle covers Clinical Innovation & Technology as a senior news writer for TriMed Media. Previously, she worked as a news reporter in northeast Missouri and earned a journalism degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She's also a huge fan of the Chicago Cubs, Bears and Bulls.