To improve the efficiency of patient care, UPMC and Nuance Communications, Inc. have come together to achieve a multi-year, multi-million-dollar innovation collaboration, in which the two industry leaders will develop Medical Intelligence solutions as a means to transform the way patient information is captured, understood and used by caregivers.
According to a press release, both the companies are working together to improve the quality and efficiency of care by creating a more complete and accurate electronic medical record (EMR), first across UPMC and then more broadly across the healthcare industry.
"Smart technology is essential to the patient-centered, accountable care that we are committed to providing at UPMC. Healthcare is rich in data that can be converted to intelligence and understanding. By partnering with Nuance, we can enable smarter use of clinical data across the industry," said Jeffrey A. Romoff, president and chief executive officer of UPMC.
Under a 10-year joint development agreement, both the companies will create speech and clinical language understanding (CLU)-enabled technologies. Offering health information technology and natural language processing, Medical Intelligence solutions from Nuance and UPMC will transform clinical data into actionable information that can be used to drive smarter clinical, business and compliance decisions.
"UPMC's deep expertise in medicine and patient care combined with Nuance's unmatched leadership in speech and language understanding technologies has the ability to change the face of healthcare delivery," said Paul Ricci, chairman and CEO of Nuance. "Together, we've entered into a unique and powerful collaboration that will accelerate the role healthcare IT plays in making clinical data more valuable."
UPMC, a $9 billion health enterprise with more than 50,000 employees, is known and respected for its medical and technological expertise and its innovative partnerships with such industry leaders as Alcatel-Lucent, IBM and GE Healthcare.
In other company news, HealthTechZone reported that people are worried about a breakup between Highmark Inc. and UPMC, and some Pittsburgh-area companies might switch health insurance providers or offer employees more choices, a survey of 32 large employers found.
Mandira Srivastava is a HealthTechZone contributor. She works as a full-time writer, ghostwriter and blogger, and has more than two years of experience in print and Web media. She has also worked on company brochures, website content and product descriptions, as well as proofreading and editing content. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
