Microsoft and Nuance Communications announced Thursday, Oct. 17, a collaboration on ambient clinical intelligence (ACI) solutions designed for healthcare providers. These technologies, the companies said in a prepared statement, are sure to “power the exam room of the future.”
ACI will “deliver a seamless and engaging interaction between clinicians and patients,” according to Microsoft and Nuance, by integrating patient data with contextual information from the electronic health record and allowing clinicians to spend more time focused on their patients.
Each company is contributing key pieces of its own product portfolio to ramp up ACI development. While Microsoft brings its Azure platform and Azure AI solution to the table, for example, Nuance is providing its Dragon Medical platform and its own “advanced conversational AI for ambient clinical documentation.”
“We have an incredible opportunity to use advances in cloud and AI technology to transform healthcare delivery,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in the statement. “Together with Nuance, we will apply the power of Azure and Azure AI to this challenge, with the aim of improving the day-to-day life of first-line healthcare workers everywhere—so they can provide better care.”
“The ambient technologies we will jointly deliver can improve productivity and professional satisfaction, while empowering doctors to focus on what they do best: take care of patients,” added Nuance CEO Mark Benjamin.
These ACI solutions are expected to begin entering the market in early 2020. As a part of this new collaboration, Nuance will also be moving many of its hosted solutions to the Azure platform.
Michael has more than 16 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.