Nuance Communications has partnered with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) to further develop its "clinical language understanding" (CLU) process and has also licensed its technologies to the huge healthcare system.
Under terms of the 10-year development deal, Nuance and UPMC will collaborate to bring CLU to the point where it can convert dictation into discrete, actionable data in an electronic health record. CLU combines speech recognition software with advanced tools designed to extract the meaning from language.
Earlier this year, Nuance announced it was working with IBM to apply its Watson technology and natural language understanding research to healthcare. In addition, Nuance has partnered with 3M Information Systems to produce the next generation of computer-assisted coding.
The "medical intelligence" solution sought by Nuance and UPMC "is essential to the patient-centered, accountable care that we are committed to providing at UPMC," said Jeffrey A. Romoff, president and chief executive officer of the health system, in a press release. "Healthcare is rich in data that can be converted to intelligence and understanding. By partnering with Nuance, we can enable smarter use of clinical data across the industry."
Initially, UPMC will integrate Nuance's current speech recognition into the clinical workflow across its system. By dropping voice recognition-transcribed dictation into the right sections of its EHR, UPMC hopes, Nuance's technology will encourage physicians to embrace the electronic record, according to InformationWeek. In addition, the application is expected to save the health system money on transcription costs.
UPMC and Nuance also plan to develop data mining methods to locate and aggregate information required for Meaningful Use. They will apply the same methods to analyzing data in UPMC's clinical data repository.
Solutions developed under the partnership will be commercially available through Nuance starting late this year, according to the announcement.
To learn more:
- read the press release
- see the InformationWeek Healthcare article
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