Microsoft and Nuance joining forces to support the resilience of healthcare
This blog post is co-authored by Diana Nole, EVP and GM of Healthcare, Nuance
There is nothing more personal or important than our health. These last two years have exacerbated an already fragile healthcare ecosystem, taxed our essential services, and put unimaginable strain on frontline workers. In response to these mounting pressures, the healthcare industry has embarked on a digital transformation that has laid the foundation for a new era of innovation and collaboration. The opportunity to reimagine care has never been greater, and the stakes have never been higher.
Today, Microsoft and Nuance officially join forces to support the resilience of healthcare.
By combining Nuance’s deep domain expertise with the scale, security, and power of the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, we have an opportunity to put outcomes-focused AI solutions into the hands of health organizations everywhere. Together, Microsoft and Nuance will help our customers drive better decision-making, create more personalized experiences for both patients and providers, and tackle some of the toughest challenges in healthcare.
Enabling the best healthcare outcomes
Health organizations are applying AI across every aspect of the care continuum—from informing precision diagnostics and therapeutics to modernizing the digital front door for patient engagement to increasing clinician efficiency. But this is only the beginning of AI’s potential for transforming care delivery experiences and improving health outcomes for patients.
Microsoft and Nuance envision a future where technology helps drive more personal, affordable, effective, and accessible healthcare while improving the patient, care team, and administrator experience. To accomplish this, we are connecting Microsoft’s advanced cloud and AI capabilities—including human-level performance in a range of cognitive services—with Nuance’s industry-leading conversational AI, ambient clinical intelligence, and integration into the existing clinical workflows. This will support health systems to deliver real-world results and timely insights for practitioners, patients, and administrators.
Alleviating clinician burnout
The frontline healthcare worker “great resignation” and clinician burnout epidemic are two of the biggest challenges we have faced as an industry this decade. In collaboration with our trusted electronic healthcare record (EHR) partners and the broader healthcare ecosystem, Microsoft and Nuance will continue to bring the most advanced capabilities into the workflow of clinicians, radiologists, and frontline workers to help reduce the overwhelming burden of administrative tasks that have made it so difficult for them to do what inspired them to go into medicine in the first place.
It’s been almost two years since Nuance and Microsoft announced the integration of the Dragon Ambient eXperience (Nuance DAX) and Microsoft Teams. Innovated by Nuance and Microsoft, the integration of Nuance DAX and Microsoft Teams for telehealth is part of the ongoing strategic partnership to accelerate the adoption of ambient clinical intelligence solutions to improve healthcare experiences by reducing administrative workloads that lead to clinician burnout. Health systems across the United States are leveraging Nuance DAX to dramatically reduce clinicians’ administrative workloads, improve clinical documentation quality, enhance patient experiences, and produce better patient and financial outcomes. The response we’ve seen from both physicians and their patients has been overwhelmingly positive as it helps to restore the trusted doctor-patient relationship. In some cases, we’ve had the honor of seeing tears of joy from doctors when they realize they can turn their focus from the computer back to their patients—and this is only one example of what Microsoft and Nuance can achieve together.
Making healthcare experience more personal
Digital transformation is not only revolutionizing the provider experience, but also changing patient expectations for how they interact with their care teams, access important health information and resources, and receive care. Bringing together the depth and breadth of our combined organizations and portfolios, Microsoft and Nuance will apply the technology, talent, industry expertise, and a partner mindset to build even better, more empowering patient-physician experiences, whether it’s:
- Combating clinician and radiologist burnout by delivering superior clinical documentation solutions, digital work experiences, and collaboration tools.
- Understanding shifting patient preferences and demands, and how technology can help meet them.
- Streamlining workflows to help care providers focus on patient outcomes.
- Bridging the silos of medical information to inform precision diagnostics and therapeutics.
- Expanding access to care by mastering virtual health solutions and developing new best practices for remote, or hospital at home, care delivery.
Looking ahead, we know that healthcare will continue to be an ever-evolving industry with changing needs and requirements. But one thing will always remain true: healthcare is about people caring for people. The healthcare organizations we serve have earned their patients’ trust through the quality of the care and caring they provide. If technology companies are going to make a difference, it will only be through deep partnerships with the full care ecosystem and by earning their trust and the trust of the people they serve. Every solution we build, every partnership we forge, every innovation and advancement we bring to the market will be designed with that powerful vision in mind.
As we enter a new era of innovation and partnership with our customers, we believe Microsoft and Nuance will continue to deliver technology that helps healthcare organizations deliver better experiences, insights, and care. We look forward to empowering practitioners and administrators to be adaptable and agile in this rapidly changing environment while building resiliency that helps us weather today’s challenges, address new ones, and build a better, healthier future for everyone.
