Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical Drives Electronic Medical Record Adoption and Delivers Strong ROI

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) September 21, 2007 --

Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN), a leading supplier of speech solutions, announced that Dragon® NaturallySpeaking® Medical 9 is helping to accelerate the adoption of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) across the healthcare industry. Despite clear benefits and strong support from government, payors and employers, EMR adoption among practicing physicians remains slow – encompassing only 20 percent of the estimated 900,000 clinicians in North America (according to Frost & Sullivan). Provided as part of Nuance's Dictaphone® Healthcare Solutions product family, Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical 9 is speeding EMR adoption by making EMR systems easier for providers to use thereby driving utilization and improvements in the quality and cost of care provided.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical 9 has proven to be a powerful conduit for physicians by overcoming the EMR's reliance on keyboard data entry, a leading hurdle for doctors and other care providers who are accustomed to report creation through traditional dictation, transcription or hand writing. Dragon speech recognition technology lets doctors describe the patient encounter in their own words directly into the EMR through free-form dictation, quickly navigate reports using spoken commands and reduce or eliminate the ongoing cost of manual transcription.

"With Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical 9 we have kept our physicians from taking on the role of typists, enabled the creation of health records beyond point-and-click templates and dramatically improved adoption of our EMR by allowing providers to continue to work the way they want to," said Ryan Frazine, MD at Internal Medicine Group, a full service laboratory and diagnostic physician practice. "Speech recognition has not only reduced the steps it takes to create a quality electronic medical record, it has reduced our transcription cost annually by $179,000 and freed physicians to spend more time with patients."

Today Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical is used by more than 50,000 physicians in North America alone, including such prestigious institutions as Massachusetts General Hospital, Lifetime Health Medical Group, The George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates and many others. An overview on speech recognition for the acceleration of EMRs has been documented in a whitepaper, available today on the Nuance website at: http://www.nuance.com/dictaphone/naturallyspeaking/whitepapers/.

"The key to physician adoption and utilization of electronic health records is to fit the technology into their workflow and manage the initial amount of change to their routine," said Glen Tullman, chief executive officer of Allscripts, a provider of electronic health records and information solutions for physicians. "Dragon Medical makes it simple for our physicians to continue to dictate notes from patient encounters as they are accustomed to do, while at the same time saving substantial dollars from traditional transcription and adding efficiency. Dragon Medical is easy to learn, fully integrated into our application, and well received by physicians."

By speech enabling their EMR applications with Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical 9, healthcare provider organizations realize the following key benefits:

--Reduced report turn-around time that enables better service to patients and streamlined reimbursement

--Reduced operating costs and increased productivity through significant reductions in transcription expense and overhead associated with the billings and collection process

--Decreased physician time-on-documentation by as much as 50 percent – freeing up the physician to spend more time with patients

--Increased cash flow and revenue by the near-immediate completion of the patient note, which reduces acute care length of stay and maximizes reimbursement in outpatient settings

"Because of proven cost containment and patient safety benefits, the era of widespread electronic medical records is approaching and we believe will accelerate as EMR software becomes accessible to physicians in a way which supports their documentation preferences," said Peter Durlach, senior vice president, healthcare marketing and product strategy for Nuance. "Studies show that the average physician spends three to four times as long to document in an EMR as compared to time spent to dictate or hand write. With Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical, care providers can reduce time-on-documentation by as much as 50 percent, deliver accurate documentation through the EMR and produce a more comprehensive medical record."

"Medical documentation via electronic medical records is the undisputed future for the healthcare industry and speech recognition is speeding this reality," said Jose Gude, MD at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, WA and physician champion for EMR implementation. "After using Dragon Medical to power two separate EMR systems, I've realized that an EMR on its own is great, but with seamless integration of speech recognition, using an EMR becomes a natural process that reflects the nuances of the doctor/patient experience. The power of speech not only eases the use of the EMR, it captures physician narrative to give patient records context."

Leading EMR and Healthcare Information Technology (HCIT) vendors that directly support Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical to control their products include: Allscripts, Athena Health, Cerner, ChartLogic, eClinicalWorks, Eclipsys, Epic Systems, GE Healthcare, McKesson, Meditech, Misys Healthcare and Practice Partners.

Source: http://www.nuance.com/

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