Nuance Introduces Customized Version of Dragon Medical for Major EHR

Nuance Communications yesterday released a specialized version of Dragon Medical 360 | Network Edition that is designed to enable physicians using Epic's electronic health record (EHR) system to optimize their productivity and documentation quality.

Dragon Medical 360 | Network Edition for Epic pairs medical speech recognition technology from Nuance with more than 1,000 customized EHR commands to enhance physician productivity. Healthcare providers also benefit from the following established Dragon Medical customizations:

• Designed for virtualized environments: Optimizes physician use of Dragon Medical with virtualized EHRs without time-intensive, costly technical integration or configuration;
• Tailored, voice-enabled templates and content: Helps streamline and ensure thorough clinical documentation by offering pre-developed templates and content for the creation of standard notes; and
• Proven, physician-led services: Offers skilled clinician consultants with deep knowledge of EHRs and Dragon Medical.

Today, more than 50 percent of U.S. physicians use Nuance speech recognition. In addition, nearly 80 percent of provider organizations using Epic also partner with Nuance because of their tight integration.

This customized version allows physicians to dictate progress notes, medical history and physicals, assessments, and the care plan directly into the EHR. It also increases patient engagement by reducing physician time spent documenting because of the multitude of commands that are now voice-enabled. Physicians spend up to 30 percent of their time documenting care in an EHR. With Nuance speech recognition, physicians can cut that time by 20-30 minutes per day.

"With numerous changes taking place in healthcare today, it's critical that physicians have tools and services that let them focus on the patient, not the technology," said Bradley Clegg, chief medical information officer at Metro Health, in a statement. "Integrating Dragon Medical and customized commands and services with the roll out of our electronic health record helped us get our physicians onboard quickly, improved their overall satisfaction, reduced transcription costs, and allowed us to establish a system that will benefit our patients."

Today, Mercy Medical Center and more than a dozen other healthcare provider organizations are using new voice-enabled mobile EHRs to drive efficiencies in physician documentation and leverage anytime, anywhere access to the EHR. "Offering Nuance's speech recognition with [the] Haiku and Canto [EHR solutions] enables our doctors to swiftly dictate their patient notes on the go, and the ease of use after hours is a major benefit to our physicians," said Kevin Hockett, ambulatory system analyst at Mercy Medical Center, in a statement.

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