Epic has equipped its EHRs with Nuance Communications' new artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistant technology, the companies announced March 7 at the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society conference.
Nuance's virtual assistant platform is an expansion of its Dragon Medical documentation tool. It features pre-built skills cued up with conversational dialogue to automate high-value clinical workflows, including secure search and navigation of the patient chart, clinical and administrative tasks, place orders, communications, schedules, and capture of clinical documentation.
"Nuance's AI-powered 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."
Here are the three newly announced innovations.
1. Epic Haiku. Nuance's virtual assistants help physicians using Epic Haiku ask for patient information, lab results, medication lists and visit summaries. The enhanced functionality runs on iOS or Android mobile devices.
2. Epic Rover. Nurses who use Epic Rover can deploy Nuance's virtual assistant to easily interact with flowsheets when entering and confirming patient information such as blood pressure, temperature, pulse, respiratory rate and oxygen saturation. This enhanced functionality also runs on iOS or Android mobile devices.
3. Epic Cadence. Scheduling staff can use the virtual assistant in Epic Cadence to access physician schedules and manage appointments with voice and natural language.
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