Nuance Healthcare Development Platform Brings Medical Speech Recognition To the Cloud

Advanced, Cloud-based Platform Provides Global Healthcare Developers Access to Industry-Leading Speech Recognition and Clinical Language Understanding Technologies

HIMSS 2011, ORLANDO, February 22, 2011 — Today, from HIMSS, Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN) announced that its industry-leading medical speech recognition capabilities and latest advancements in Clinical Language Understanding (CLU) technology will be available through the Nuance Healthcare Development Platform.  With this new cloud-based platform, third-party developers, serving global markets, can rapidly incorporate Nuance Healthcare technologies as part of a wide variety of healthcare applications, providing users with new capabilities for speech-driven clinical documentation, voice navigation and automatic clinical fact extraction.

The Nuance Healthcare Development Platform supports multiple devices and operating systems.  By providing all of the CPU intensive speech and language processing in the cloud, this new platform enables Healthcare ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) and internal development teams at provider and payer organizations to seamlessly embed Nuance’s SpeechAnywhere capabilities and CLU functionality as part of browser-based applications, mobile applications and thin-client desktop solutions.  The flexible environment of this new platform as a service expands the delivery of Nuance’s speech and CLU technologies to empower healthcare organizations, physicians, interdisciplinary care teams and patients to achieve better patient documentation, better process and better care.

“Dictation has proven to be among the most preferred, intuitive and effective ways to document clinical information,” said Janet Dillione, executive vice president and general manager, Nuance Healthcare.  “By expanding access to Nuance’s speech recognition and Clinical Language Understanding capabilities, the Nuance Healthcare Development Platform is enabling application developers to unleash an entire new ecosystem of healthcare applications that will help clinicians and patients create and use high quality clinical documentation better and smarter than ever before.”

The Nuance Healthcare Development Platform empowers developers to build a wide array of clinical solutions including ones that:

•Bring Cloud-based Speech Recognition to Smartphones, Tablets, PCs and Browser-based Applications – Enable physicians, nurses and other caregivers to dictate patient notes in real-time into clinical applications,
such as electronic health records (EHR), running on an array of devices including the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
•Convert Narrative Clinical Documentation to Structured Data within an EHR – CLU will automatically extract key, structured clinical data from clinicians’ dictated notes: patient complaints and allergies, physician-
assessed diagnoses, medication and procedural treatments, and health-related habits.
•Automate Information Retrieval at the Point-of-Care – While at a patient’s bedside, in their office or at home, clinicians can simply dictate a search query to access desired information.  Whether the clinician is
looking for updated patient test results or clinical information from an EHR, clinical data repository or other source of medical content, it can be easily accessed via a mobile device.
•Collect Patient Information – Deploy advanced speech capabilities on PCs, patient Kiosks and mobile devices to enable patients to speak their key medical information, including history of present illness, current
medications and allergies.

Nuance Healthcare Developer Quotes

Industry leaders that have already integrated capabilities from the Platform as part of their solutions include: Epocrates and Calgary Scientific.

“ResolutionMD Mobile, powered by PureWeb, delivers secure, full-functionality advanced visualization of 2D and 3D, medical images and associated patient reports directly to mobile devices, including the iPhone and iPad.  By incorporating Nuance’s new cloud-based speech recognition capabilities into the ResolutionMD workflow, clinicians will experience an enhanced level of efficiency,” said Randy Rountree, executive vice president of global sales and marketing at Calgary Scientific.  “Our mobile development team was able to rapidly access the Nuance Healthcare Development Platform and easily incorporate cloud-based, real-time speech recognition as an upcoming feature of the ResolutionMD Mobile reporting functionality.  Now, our customers will benefit from the ability to view images and create reports instantly via speech-recognized dictation from within the same app.”

Epocrates has incorporated Nuance’s SpeechAnywhere technology as part of its web-based EHR solution.  Aimed to meet the unique needs of solo and small group physician practices, Epocrates’ EHR solution incorporates Nuance-powered speech functionality, which enables physicians to easily capture information – any time (day or night), any where (in the office, in the car, at home) and on any device (desktop, iPhone, iPad, etc.).  Physicians will benefit from the ease-of-access to, and flexibility in creating medical records, as well as from the immediate availability of clinical notes for the entire care team, leading to faster and better patient care.

The Healthcare Development Platform incorporates many advanced capabilities including:

•Rapid Application Integration – Application developers can integrate the core SpeechAnywhere functionality in a matter of minutes reducing time to market.
•Flexible, Multi-Modal Applications – Clinicians can freely mix voice, touch and typing to control and document within their applications, creating a seamless user experience.
•Specialized Medical Speech and Language Models – With Nuance’s leading medical speech technology embedded, users will achieve high levels of accuracy and automatic data formatting, minimizing the need for
corrections.
•HIPPA Supportive Security – With HIPAA supportive security and encryption features, users can be sure of data security and privacy.
•Supports Multiple Devices and Operating Platforms – Enables SpeechAnywhere capabilities for applications operating within browsers running on Windows and Mac OSX environments, .NET applications running on Windows desktops and the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.  Future versions of the platform will support an expanded list of computing platforms, mobile devices and operating systems.

The Nuance Healthcare Developer Program
Through the Nuance Healthcare Developer Program <http://www.nuance.com/for-healthcare/developers-program/index.htm> healthcare developers can gain instant access to Nuance’s medical speech recognition technologies for rapid inclusion into their applications, all through a self-service website.  Developers also have access to an on-line forum for additional support, a variety of code samples and full documentation.  To learn more about the Program and the Platform please visit:http://www.nuance.com/for-healthcare/development-platform/index.htm

As part of Nuance’s ongoing commitment to integrate the Company’s worldwide technologies and solutions, the Nuance Healthcare Development Platform has been fully designed to support both the Dragon and SpeechMagic speech engines, as well as a variety of international languages.  The initial version of the Nuance Healthcare Development Platform will be commercially available by the end the first quarter of 2011 and will support the Dragon speech engine for U.S. English.  In releases scheduled for calendar Q4, 2011 SpeechMagic and international language support will be added.

While at HIMSS, visit Nuance at booth #2744 to learn more about the Nuance Healthcare Development Platform and the entire healthcare portfolio.  For more information on CLU visit:  http://www.nuance.com/for-healthcare/resources/clu/index.htm

Nuance Healthcare
In the era of Accountable Healthcare, where there is shared responsibility for the quality and cost of patient care, Nuance Healthcare’s portfolio of Medical Intelligence solutions empower healthcare provider organizations, payers and individual physicians worldwide to deliver higher quality care, improve financial performance and enhance compliance efforts.  Nuance Healthcare employs a range of technologies and services as part of its full portfolio – speech recognition, clinical language understanding, decision support, test results management and data analysis.
For additional information on Nuance’s healthcare IT solutions visit: http://www.nuance.com/for-healthcare/index.htm

Nuance Communications
Nuance Communications, Inc. 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. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com

About Calgary Scientific Inc.
Calgary Scientific is dedicated to providing advanced web-enablement, mobility enhancement and advanced visualization solutions to industries looking for secure access and use of their data or graphics intensive applications, while using their existing systems. All of these products demonstrate a leading edge web and mobile enablement capability made possible with the unique power of PureWeb™. Calgary Scientific also has proprietary intellectual property for image fusion, virtual colonoscopy and Computer Assisted Tissue Identification (CATI™). Calgary Scientific aims to be the premier leader and provider of truly accessible, advanced visualization solutions, in the medical imaging market, as well as the industry leaders in web and mobility enablement technologies. For more information on Calgary Scientific, go to www.calgaryscientific.com.

Trademark reference: Nuance, the Nuance logo, Dragon and Dragon Medical are registered trademarks or trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other company names or product names referenced herein may be the property of their respective owners.

Statements in this document regarding Nuance managements’ future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans or prospects constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements that are not statements of historical fact (including statements containing the words “believes,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “expects,” or “estimates” or similar expressions) should also be considered to be forward-looking statements. There are a number of important factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements, including: fluctuations in demand for Nuance’s existing and future products; economic conditions in the United States and abroad; the effects of competition, including pricing pressure; possible defects in Nuance’s products and technologies; the ability of Nuance to successfully integrate operations and employees of acquired businesses; the ability to realize anticipated synergies from acquired businesses; and the other factors described in Nuance’s annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2010 and Nuance’s quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Nuance disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this document.

   

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