Nuance, Epic partner for EHR-integrated AI-virtual health assistants

At HIMSS 2018, Nuance Communications and Epic announced a partnership that will integrate Nuance's new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered virtual assistant platform into Epic’s electronic health record (EHR).

“Technology needs to be unobtrusive and support the process of providing high quality patient care,” said David Y. Ting, MD, CMIO, with the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization. “Having Nuance’s AI-powered virtual assistant technology embedded into Epic will help make a new generation of patient care a reality—for both clinicians and patients.”

Following a CHIME survey that found 70 percent of hospital CIO’s would consider adopting virtual assistants with AI capabilities, the two companies hope the partnership could improve caregiver productivity and efficiency.

“Nuance’s virtual assistants with conversational AI functionality expand the ways that physicians and care teams can instantly capture and retrieve patient information,” said Carl Dvorak, president of Epic. “These advancements represent a growing need for next-level conversational AI capabilities and we expect them to be a catalyst for changing how and what physicians are required to document in progress notes.”

“Epic’s EHR, integrated with our AI-powered virtual assistant technology, represents extensive product collaboration and strategic alignment between both companies on the importance of delivering greater clinician productivity and efficiency across the care continuum,” said Satish Maripuri, executive vice president and general manager, Healthcare division, Nuance Communications. “Our new healthcare virtual assistant technology is a first step in a new generation of innovation that will empower care teams to work more naturally and reinforces both companies’ beliefs that to improve the overall quality of care, we must enable clinicians and care teams to maximize time with their patients.”