BURLINGTON, Mass., and CHICAGO—March 2, 2020—Nuance® Communications, Inc (NASDAQ: NUAN) and the American Medical Association (AMA) today announced a strategic collaboration that will pilot test the combination of each organization’s respective technologies in an effort to reduce documentation burden that distracts from patient care and demoralizes highly-trained physicians.
The collaboration will leverage Nuance’s expertise in ambient clinical intelligence (ACI) – which securely facilitates the transformation of clinical conversations between patients and physicians into reliable medical chart notes – with AMA’s expertise in physician burnout prevention and healthcare informatics in a shared exploration of innovations to empower clinical decisions, enhance the quality care, and boost physician well-being.
The organizations’ mutual goal is to assess their respective innovative solutions that work in tandem with electronic health record (EHR) systems to prioritize time with patients rather than overload clinicians with data entry tasks. In particular, the collaboration will explore opportunities to optimize Nuance’s ACI solution working in tandem with IHMI’s clinical knowledge graph.
“Documentation overload interferes with patient care and contributes significantly to physician burnout. Our aim is to explore technology innovation that can reduce this burden and provide physicians more time with patients, not paperwork,” said AMA CEO James L. Madara, M.D. “By working together with Nuance to leverage the incredible potential of our combined expertise and resources, we can more effectively address a major contributing factor to physician burnout.”
“Our collaboration with the AMA is another key step toward solving one of the most difficult and high-priority problems facing all of healthcare today - the challenge of reducing physician and other caregiver burnout so that providers can refocus on the patient,” said Mark Benjamin, CEO Nuance. “It’s also a great example of how Nuance is continuing to combine AI-powered technical innovation, domain focus, and close collaboration with trusted partners like the AMA, Microsoft, and our EHR partners to deliver solutions from which we can all benefit.”
The AMA-Nuance collaboration is one of the multiple efforts both organizations are taking to alleviate physician burnout caused by increasing administrative and documentation demands. An energized, engaged, and resilient physician workforce is essential to achieving national health goals and there is a strong economic case for prioritizing physician well-being. A recent study involving AMA experts shows that primary care physicians spend more than half of their workday keeping up with data entry administrative tasks, significantly cutting into available time for patients. Another recent study involving AMA researchers reported that physician turnover and reduced clinical hours are attributable to burnout costs of $4.6 billion, or about $7,600 per physician, in the United States each year.
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About the American Medical Association
The American Medical Association is the physicians’ powerful ally inpatient care. As the only medical association that convenes 190+ state and specialty medical societies and other critical stakeholders, the AMA represents physicians with a unified voice to all key players in health care. The AMA leverages its strength by removing the obstacles that interfere with patient care, leading the charge to prevent chronic disease and confront public health crises and, driving the future of medicine to tackle the biggest challenges in healthcare.
About Nuance Healthcare
Nuance provides intelligent systems that support a more natural and insightful approach to clinical documentation, freeing clinicians to spend more time caring for patients. Nuance healthcare solutions capture, improve, and communicate more than 300 million patient stories each year, helping more than 500,000 clinicians in 10,000 global healthcare organizations to drive meaningful clinical and financial outcomes. Nuance’s award-winning clinical speech recognition, medical transcription, CDI, coding, quality, and medical imaging solutions provide a more complete and accurate view of patient care.
About Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN) is the pioneer and leader in conversational AI innovations that bring intelligence to everyday work and life. The company delivers solutions that understand, analyze, and respond to people – amplifying human intelligence to increase productivity and security. With decades of domain and AI expertise, Nuance works with thousands of organizations globally across healthcare, financial services, telecommunications, government, and retail – to create stronger relationships and better experiences for their customers and workforce. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.
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For more information, press only:
Robert J. Mills, The American Medical Association, (312) 464-5970, Robert.Mills@ama-assn.org
Caitlyn Keating, Nuance Communications, (781) 565-8926, Caitlyn.Keating@nuance.com