February 21, 2017 ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) and Epic announce that the companies are joining forces to create more access and job opportunities for disabled persons scheduling medical appointments. The new innovations, powered by Nuance’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology and Epic’s Electronic Health Record (EHR) system, include a hands-free virtual assistant, which is available for demonstration at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual Convention and Exhibition February 20-24 in Orlando.

There are nearly 20 million military veterans in the U.S., and 4 million have service-connected disabilities. Scheduling medical appointments for our nation’s veterans may be an extremely difficult task without assistance. Together, Epic’s EHR paired with Nuance’s healthcare virtual assistant technology, Florence, provide an AI-powered conversational user interface and simple design that makes technology easy to use by supporting intuitive voice-driven interactions, such as scheduling an appointment in seconds. Voice-driven workflows will be featured as part of the Medical Appointment Scheduling System program (MASS), a nationwide deployment of Epic scheduling software in VA Medical Centers, improving veterans’ access to care.

Leveraging Nuance’s long history of delivering assistive technology and conversational solutions with Epic’s award-winning EHR will help people with disabilities gain independence and improved access to the information they need fast and securely. Nuance has delivered speech recognition technology to the U.S. Veteran’s Health Administration System through long-standing relationships across the health system, which includes 14,000 physicians across 152 hospitals supporting more than 8 million patients annually. Timely and accurate information is critical to enhance efficiency and patient care, and Nuance’s next-generation clinical documentation solutions also support all branches of the Department of Defense at hundreds of facilities across the U.S and overseas.
“Nuance has invested heavily over the last decade to develop conversational and cognitive virtual assistant and AI technologies that will improve the experience of patients, employees and providers to support our mission of delivering solutions that help our clients deliver better patient care without technology getting in the way,” said Satish Maripuri, executive vice president and general manager of the Healthcare Division, Nuance. “This is an important invaluable initiative to help our nation’s veterans get what they need faster and to become more independent. It is an honor and a privilege to do this work on their behalf. We are very focused on such deeply-embedded solutions to drive value for our clients.”

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