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Major Natural Language Processing Advancements from Nuance
Empower Healthcare Industry to Transform Unstructured Data into
Meaningful, Usable Clinical Information
L&C Acquisition and a Strategic Partnership with Massachusetts General
Hospital Enhance Nuance’s Leadership Role in Clinical Documentation, NLP and
Qualification for Meaningful Use
HIMSS 2010, Atlanta, GA – March 01, 2010 – Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq:
NUAN), today announced significant advancements in its strategic Natural Language Processing
(NLP) initiative for the healthcare industry. Expanding upon its existing technological
capabilities and team of health information technology (HIT) experts, Nuance, a market leader in
speech-driven clinical documentation and communication, will deliver breakthrough NLPpowered clinical documentation solutions to help analyze, structure and utilize the more than 80
percent of unstructured clinical documentation that exists in the healthcare industry today.
By empowering healthcare organizations to “unlock” unstructured clinical documentation,
sometimes referred to as the “narrative blob,” Nuance’s NLP solutions will enable the extraction
of clinically relevant data that would otherwise be impossible to access, unless done manually by
humans. With this access, healthcare organizations will increase the amount of meaningful data
that can be used for clinical decision making, leading to improved patient care and a reduction in
overall healthcare costs. Furthermore, by helping collect and report on various diagnostic, quality
and safety measures, Nuance will help healthcare organizations advance efforts to qualify for
Meaningful Use reimbursements associated with certified electronic health record (EHR)
technology, as outlined in the HITECH Act.
In addition to significant internal NLP research and development investments, Nuance has
acquired key technologies and researchers from Language and Computing, Inc. (L&C), a
pioneering developer of clinical narrative processing technology. Nuance has also formed a
strategic partnership with Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), which will enable Nuance to
incorporate MGH’s proven NLP solution, Smart Dictation, into its own solution portfolio for the
healthcare market.
“Natural Language Processing adds meaning to the clinical narrative, so that clinicians’ spoken
words are not simply transformed into text, but can be used to create meaningful clinical data
that can be inserted into an EHR or other data repositories without forcing doctors to document
via time consuming and restrictive point-and-click templates,” said John Shagoury, executive
vice president for Healthcare, Nuance. “By adding these new Natural Language Processing
technologies and capabilities, Nuance has advanced its commitment to improve the clinical
documentation process for healthcare organizations by extending the power of our speech-driven
solutions that cater to both to clinicians’ documentation preferences and provider organizations’
need to create structured data within their EHRs.”
By integrating L&C’s NLP technologies into its healthcare portfolio, Nuance will enhance its
ability to address the structured data management challenges in healthcare with its award
winning line of clinical documentation solutions including Dragon Medical, eScription and
Dictaphone Enterprise Speech System. With these integrated technologies, Nuance will provide
solutions to the healthcare market that enable advanced clinical data warehousing, clinical
decision support, data mining, coding for billing and disease management. L&C’s powerful
technologies include a comprehensive medical knowledge base that is specifically designed to
extract clinically relevant and discrete data from unstructured medical documentation. L&C
technology is currently deployed at major healthcare institutions, including Kaiser Permanente
and Ochsner.
As part of Nuance’s broad partnership with MGH, Nuance will exclusively license Smart
Dictation NLP, a pioneering system that was developed by the MGH Lab of Computer Science,
which is currently being used by MGH physicians to automatically extract key data elements
from narrative dictations and populate the EHR. Nuance will leverage key capabilities of this
technology alongside its full portfolio of NLP and speech-driven clinical documentation
solutions to help healthcare organizations convert unstructured text into a structured, digital and
interoperable format that contains extracted data elements for a variety of applications.
To further support its mission associated with NLP development and its goal of maintaining the
important clinician narrative in EHRs, Nuance has joined the Health Story Project, a
collaboration of healthcare vendors, providers and associations. The Health Story Project
believes clinical documentation that includes the physician narrative is crucial to facilitate the
electronic exchange of comprehensive health information and should be defined as part of
Meaningful Use criteria. Additionally, with this group, which holds an Associate Charter
Agreement with Health Level Seven (HL7), Nuance will contribute to the development and
support of the HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) standards to enhance the flow of
clinical information between narrative dictations and the EHR.
To learn more about Nuance’s NLP initiatives and solutions, and to see its full healthcare
portfolio, please visit Nuance’s booth at HIMSS #7633.
Nuance’s Healthcare Business
Nuance’s healthcare portfolio of proven, speech-enabled clinical documentation and
communication solutions enable healthcare provider organizations to improve financial
performance, enhance patient care, and increase patient safety. With more than 5,000 healthcare
provider organization customers worldwide, Nuance has the experience and solutions that meet
the individual needs of any size healthcare provider organization.
About Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance 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 and professional services. For more information, please visit:
www.nuance.com.
Nuance, Dragon and the Nuance logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance
Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other
company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
The statements in this press release, relating to future plans or future events or services, are
forward-looking statements which are subject to specific risks and uncertainties. There are a
number of factors which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those
indicated in such forward looking statements, including fluctuations in demand for the Nuance
products, the relationship with the customer or partner and the continued development of
Nuance products. The reader is warned not to rely on these forward-looking statements without
reservation, since these are simply reflections of the current situation. Nuance disclaims any
obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after
the date of this document.
Other Press Releases:

February 05 - Nuance Names Bob Schassler Executive
Vice President and General Manager of Nuance Mobile

February 05 - Nuance Appoints Ken Siegel as Chief
Legal Officer
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February 02 - ILTA Technology Survey Results
Showcase Nuance’s Leadership for Document Scanning
and Cost Recovery Solutions in Legal Industry
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January 25 - Nuance to Release First Quarter Fiscal
2016 Results on Tuesday, February 9, 2016
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January 21 - ATO Implements Nuance Voice
Biometrics to Become the First Organization to Offer
Multi-Channel Voice Biometrics Authentication
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