The Record - Issue 21: Summer 2021

I NT E R V I EW BY E L LY YAT E S - ROB E R T S T he promise of artificial intelligence (AI) has been apparent for a long time, but only in recent years have organisations deliv- ered on it. Nuance Communications is bringing AI to healthcare through its Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) solution. By enabling the physician to focus completely on the patient, Nuance DAX’s sophisticated conversational AI and ambient technology captures and contextu- alises the patient encounter and creates a clinical note, which is then available in the EHR for the physician’s review and signature. “Back in 2017, we explained to our research- ers what we wanted to achieve, and they told us that we were talking about ‘the Harry Potter experience,’ with a floating quill writing as you speak,” says Jared Pelo, chief medical informa- tion officer, Dragon Ambient eXperience, at Nuance Communications. “They were skeptical. But we have surprised everyone with the leaps and bounds that we’ve made. The technology has matured and is evolving quickly. We watched speech recognition as it really struggled back in the day, and now it’s at a point where it can cap- ture clinical encounters and automatically create clinical notes from those encounters.” Manually writing patient documentation can take approximately 10 minutes per patient and is often completed during the clinical inter- action. “In this situation, the patient isn’t get- ting the full attention of their doctor because they are busy writing notes,” says Pelo. “With Nuance DAX, the physician can offload the documentation burden, so they can completely focus on the patient.” Nuance customer WellSpan Health surveyed their patients and found that 97 per cent felt that their doctors were more engaged when using Nuance DAX. “We’ve seen physician burnout go from 72 per cent to 17 per cent, after just a few months of using Nuance DAX,” says Pelo. “Physicians using DAX who were planning on retiring now intend to practise for another five years.” The solution can be used for telehealth with any telehealth platform and is integrated with Microsoft Teams for a more seamless experience, eliminating the tech toggling inherent now when going from screen to screen on various devices. NuanceDAX forMicrosoftTeams enables physi- cians to activate DAX fromwithin their Microsoft Teams workflows. It can be used with any EHR to securely scale telehealth visits while allowing physicians to remain focused on patients. Nuance Communications’ Jared Pelo explains how the firm’s AI-powered solution is transforming healthcare administration The promise of AI “We’ve seen physician burnout go from 72 per cent to 17 per cent, after just a few months of using Nuance DAX” 137