Nuance and athenahealth Expand Strategic Collaboration to Reduce Cognitive Burden on Physicians and Care Teams and Improve the Patient Experience

athenahealth and Nuance Communications recently announced an expansion of their strategic collaboration to include the integration of Nuance’s cloud-based Dragon Medical, bringing speech and virtual assistant technology into the athenaOne EHR and Mobile App. By leveraging the power of Nuance’s conversational AI platform, athenaOne Dictation users can take advantage of fully integrated, voice-driven capabilities that help clinicians reduce documentation time and burden in an effort to improve patient experiences.

The collaboration between Nuance and athenahealth is driven by advances in speech technology and the demonstrated ability to transform clinical documentation and improve productivity through an intuitive voice-driven workflow. According to a recent survey, 94% of clinicians believe speech recognition and virtual assistant technology will improve the ability to document care. Nuance's Dragon Medical technology helps physicians communicate naturally and accomplish documentation tasks more quickly.

“The athenaOne Mobile App with dictation has helped me capture my patients’ stories much more thoroughly and my assessments now reflect more complex thinking and differential diagnoses. I use it all the time to dictate during the patient encounter without taking my focus from them, and they are finding that the treatment plan and instructions are more memorable,” says Dr. Angela Ammon, a family medicine specialist at Valley View Hospital. “The accuracy of the solution is better than the other voice recognition programs I have used in the past. It’s easy to train the names of local physicians and is excellent for recognizing medication names and medical terms.”

A network-enabled, SaaS-based platform, athenaOne generates insights from across 110 specialties and provides an integrated suite of technology to help health care organizations improve clinical, revenue cycle, and patient engagement workflows. The platform is an adaptable EHR, practice management, and patient engagement solution paired with world-class services that eliminate most back-office administrative work. It also serves as a broader end-to-end solution by combining other capabilities, including telehealth, data-driven reporting, an application marketplace, and a user group community.

“At athenahealth, our collaboration efforts with Nuance are directly pointed at supporting ambulatory care practices and healthcare systems, their providers, and their patients,” says Paul Brient, chief product officer at athenahealth. “Amid the continued strain that the pandemic puts on health care workers and the growing need for more efficient, positive experiences in healthcare, Nuance was the ideal partner to help bring a solution to life. With the integration of Nuance’s industry-leading technology with our athenaOne EHR, physicians can spend less time on administrative work and more time focusing on patient care.”

Nuance Dragon Medical is trusted by more than 550,000 physicians worldwide. The integration of Nuance’s cloud-based Dragon Medical and virtual assistant technology into the athenaOne EHR and Mobile App gives physicians the ability to document patient encounters naturally and accurately and navigate patient encounters using simple voice commands whether they’re in the exam room or on the go.

“Patients want to be fully engaged in their health and care. When we reduce documentation burden with conversational AI technology, clinicians can give more time, empathy, context, and personalized care to their patients,” says Peter Durlach, chief strategy officer at Nuance Communications. “Together with athenahealth, we are helping clinicians navigate their EHR by voice, and document patient encounters easily and consistently across mobile and desktop devices—keeping patients front and center—to improve their experiences, outcomes, and lives.”

athenahealth and mutual Nuance customers can start deploying athenaOne Dictation Powered by Nuance immediately and can learn more about it at www.athenahealth.com/solutions/medical-dictation-software. Voice assistant capabilities are currently in beta and will become generally available later in 2021.

Source: athenahealth and Nuance Communications