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Renown Health and UW Health Replace Manual Processes with
Nuance’s Diagnostic Imaging Solutions to Drive Cost Savings, Enhance
Compliance and Improve Patient Care
Diagnostic Departments Find Significant Value in Speech Recognition, Clinical
Communication Tools, and Patient Outcome Analysis Capabilities Despite IT
Purchasing Constraint
RSNA — Chicago, IL , November 30, 2009 – Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:
NUAN) today announced that Renown Health, northern Nevada’s largest not-for-profit health
network, and UW Health, which represents the five academic healthcare entities of the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, have both included Nuance’s diagnostic imaging solutions as
part of their enterprise IT portfolio.
A primary goal of healthcare reform is to “bend the healthcare spending curve,” an initiative
aimed at slowing and reducing the amount of money spent annually on healthcare while
simultaneously improving the quality of care delivered. While a contributing factor to growing
industry costs has been the increased use of medical technology, there is ample evidence that
healthcare IT solutions that replace older technologies and manual processes, can actually result
in lower costs and improved care.
One example of how technology can save the industry money vs. increasing spending is the shift
from traditional medical transcription for clinical documentation to the use of speech recognition
for radiology reporting.
“Today, nearly 100 radiologists and 50 fellows and residents use speech recognition across
multiple UW Health sites to report on more than 250,000 exams annually. Because we’ve added
speech recognition to the radiology reporting workflow, we are able to create reports
instantaneously, whereas five years ago it might have taken two-four days to finalize a report,”
said Gary Wendt, MD, MBA, enterprise director of medical imaging at UW Health. “Speech
recognition has helped UW Health to significantly bend the cost curve with estimated medical
transcription savings at nearly $400,000. In the next year, we expect to double the amount of
radiology reports we create with speech recognition, and expect our savings to increase even
more.”
Beyond the use of healthcare IT solutions for controlling cost growth, patient safety and
compliance are also areas in which technology can contribute significant benefits. In 2006,
nearly two-thirds of hospitals surveyed by The Joint Commission failed to meet the accreditation
requirement for communication of critical test results. To combat this problem, The Joint
Commission Standards for national patient safety now require that hospitals improve the
effectiveness of caregiver communication and track the results for critical tests and diagnostic
procedures in a timely basis. Because getting information to the right clinician in a timely
manner can be challenging, healthcare organizations, such as Renown Health, are deploying
Veriphy. Veriphy is a critical test result management (CTRM) system that will provide Renown
Health the ability to consistently track, document and improve the effectiveness and timeliness of
communicating critical results to the responsible caregiver for a patient. Renown Health will
deploy Veriphy as its standard process for communication and documentation amongst ordering
clinicians and radiologists.
“Patient safety and compliance is core to our hospital’s mission. We believe that by adding the
right mix of healthcare IT to our workflow, we will be able to improve the way we serve
patients, create a safer environment for care, and enhance our ability to comply with industry
regulatory requirements,” said Christine Wells, Director of Outpatient Imaging, Renown Health.
“Renown Health will deploy Nuance’s RadWhere, Veriphy and RadCube solutions in March
2010. As part of the roll-out, we will replace manual medical transcription, manual critical
communication processes and will gain intelligence on diagnostic imaging utilization and
physician ordering habits; this knowledge will help us drive the best patient outcomes possible.”
To ensure readily available and highly accurate clinical documentation, Renown Health will use
Nuance’s RadWhere, a radiology reporting solution with accuracy rates up to 99 percent. At the
core of the RadWhere application is the latest in structured speech recognition technology,
optimized specifically for the radiology domain to work within picture archiving and
communication system (PACS) and radiology information system (RIS) environments and
significantly reduce or eliminate the need for transcription. Radiologists may complete reports in
real-time with free-text speech recognition, standard site templates, individual radiologist
templates and other features focused on meeting the industry need for reduced turnaround time,
increased accuracy and consistency of reporting, as well as improved provider efficiency.
Renown Health will also deploy Nuance’s RadCube software solution, a Web-based intelligence
tool for the collection, analysis and sharing of data (decision-support, ordering, patient outcome
information, etc.) that can be viewed via one interface for instantaneous analytics to drive
appropriate order monitoring, forecasting, and provider productivity. Renown Health will also
have access to the de-identified, aggregate data of all medical groups using RadCube, thereby
improving the their knowledge of which diagnostic imaging tests produce the best patient
outcomes.
“UW Health and Renown Health are two forward thinking customers that have recognized the
substantial impact that Nuance’s Diagnostic IT solutions can have on an organization’s work
processes and bottom-line. Technologies that enable clinical decision-support, speech driven
reporting, patient outcomes analysis, and automated caregiver communication are proven
examples of how the healthcare cost curve can be bent while patient care, provider productivity
and satisfaction simultaneously improve,” said Peter Durlach, senior vice president product
strategy and marketing, Nuance Healthcare. “To ensure healthcare organizations can easily
acquire these technologies in an economic time when capital purchases can be difficult to
execute, we have designed a flexible, transactional pricing model that will generate immediate
ROI for our customers with little or no upfront capital investment.”
For more information on all of Nuance’s healthcare solutions, flexible pricing offers and
demonstrations, visit Nuance’s booth #3416 (South Building — Hall A) at the annual RSNA
Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting, November 29 — December 3, McCormick Place,
Chicago.
Nuance Healthcare
Nuance’s healthcare portfolio of proven, speech-enabled clinical documentation and
communication solutions includes closed-loop radiology management solutions to support the
radiology practice from start to finish. Nuance’s solutions significantly improve the diagnostic
imaging workflow by adding radiology decision support (RadPort) to enable data driven, realtime e-Ordering, speech recognition reporting (PowerScribe and RadWhere), critical test result
management (Veriphy) communication, and a business intelligence solution (RadCube) for
utilization management, patient and outcomes analysis, as well as clinical and operational
trending.
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, RadPort, RadCube, PowerScribe, RadWhere, Veriphy 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 09 - Nuance Announces First Quarter 2016
Results

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

February 02 - ILTA Technology Survey Results
Showcase Nuance’s Leadership for Document Scanning
and Cost Recovery Solutions in Legal Industry

January 25 - Nuance to Release First Quarter Fiscal
2016 Results on Tuesday, February 9, 2016
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