McKesson And eClinicalWorks Complete Nuance's Dragon Medical EHR Certification Program

Nuance Communications, Inc. , a leading supplier of speech solutions, recently announced that eClinicalWorks, a privately held leader in the ambulatory clinical systems market, and McKesson Practice Partner, a leading integrated electronic health record (EHR), medical billing, and appointment scheduling software, have successfully completed Nuance's Dragon Medical EHR Certification Program. Developed to facilitate collaboration between Nuance and EHR vendors, the Program optimizes clinician use of EHRs by introducing a new standard of speech recognition interoperability.

EHR systems offer the potential to dramatically improve the cost and quality of healthcare. And yet, despite recent industry developments favoring their implementation, EHR software is used by only 20 percent of clinicians in the U.S. today. However, with the help of enabling technologies such as speech recognition, physicians can more effectively and efficiently document their findings through dictation into electronic records. As a result, more EHR vendors are working to ensure Nuance's speech recognition is seamlessly incorporated into their applications, helping to accelerate adoption and the associated collection of key quality metrics.

"As a specialist, I need to communicate exactly what I'm thinking to other doctors about our shared patients' conditions," said Dr. Andrew S. Fireman, Cardiovascular Disease Physician - Abington, Pennsylvania. "While I've been using an electronic medical record system (eClinicalWorks) for two years, using it with speech recognition (Dragon Medical) capabilities enhances the solution. The amount of detailed information that speech recognition enables doctors to include by speaking freely, paired with the immediate availability of the information improves the value of the documentation, streamlines the time in which it can be shared and speeds the delivery of care. The best way for doctors to communicate is to share exactly what was thought and said during the patient encounter; if you can't do that in-person, speech recognition within the electronic medical record is the next best thing."

Compatible "out-of-the-box" with more than 150 EHR systems, Dragon Medical is already used by over 100,000 clinicians in the U.S. to document clinical records and dictate correspondence; making it the most widely used real-time speech recognition system in medicine today.

"By 2015, healthcare providers are expected to be actively utilizing an EHR in compliance with the government's ‘meaningful use' definition or they will be subject to financial penalties under Medicare. Nuance's speech recognition has emerged as a leading healthcare technology that enables clinicians to effectively utilize and adopt EHR systems," said Peter Durlach, senior vice president of marketing and product strategy, Nuance Healthcare. "Through their collective participation in Nuance's EHR Certification Program, eClinicalWorks and McKesson have established themselves as industry leaders dedicated to ensuring that Nuance's speech recognition technology is a prime component of their EHR clinical documentation workflow."

According to a recent survey completed by 1,255 physicians who have adopted Nuance's Dragon Medical software:

• 83 percent said that it improved the quality of their electronic patient notes;
• 81 percent said that it significantly reduced transcription spending; and,
• 69 percent said it made their EHR faster and easier to use.

To become a Dragon Medical Certified EHR, eClinicalWorks and McKesson completed testing which focused on how a provider would ultimately use Dragon Medical within the physician documentation portion of a given application.

"By incorporating Dragon Medical's speech recognition software into our EHR solutions, we've been able to create many customized voice macros to combine text and mouse clicks into one command – a huge shortcut feature for physicians," said Sameer Bhat, vice president of sales and co-founder of eClinicalWorks. "eClinicalWorks is passionately committed to providing clinicians with solutions that decrease costs, reduce errors and improve the quality of care, and our completion of the Dragon Medical EHR Certification Program further underscores this commitment."

The main goal of the Dragon Medical EHR Certification Program is to optimize the EHR experience of clinicians by testing core competencies within each EHR, including:

• Dictation in the EHR
• Correction in the EHR
• Audio Preservation
• Navigation Throughout Text
• Native Dragon Medical Edit Box Support
• Copy and Paste Support
• Formatting Support
• Input Control
• Hidden Dictation Mode Support

Part of the Dragon Medical EHR certification process also entails the completion of a joint evaluation procedure, during which eClinicalWorks and McKesson worked with Nuance engineers and product teams to further optimize Dragon Medical software's interoperability with their EHRs.

"At the core of our Practice Partner software is Bright Note Technology, a dynamic processing technology enabled by Dragon Medical so that physicians can easily capture discrete data through voice, and then synchronize that information across the entire patient chart with a single touch," said David Henriksen, senior vice president and general manager, McKesson's Physician Practice Solutions business. "At McKesson, we believe that the ability to access and document patient information and generate meaningful data is essential to delivering exceptional health outcomes and, ultimately, driving quality care and physician profitability."

To find out more about Nuance's speech recognition technology and other solutions for the healthcare industry, please visit: http://www.nuance.com/healthcare/.

About eClinicalWorks
eClinicalWorks is a privately held leader in the ambulatory clinical systems market. The company's unified electronic medical record (EMR) and practice management (PM) solutions are proven for every market segment: large practice groups, including Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative (MAeHC), Electronic Health Records of Rhode Island (EHRRI) and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, as well as medium, small and solo practices regardless of specialty. The company enjoys high profitability with a five-year compounded growth rate of more than 100 percent year-to-year. With an established customer base of more than 30,000 providers and 100,000 healthcare professionals across all 50 states, eClinicalWorks has been awarded multiple top industry honors including being named to the Inc. 500 in 2008 and 2007, and prominently placed in a report released by IDC company Health Industry Insights, titled Healthcare Provider Industry Short List: Ambulatory Electronic Health Records and Electronic Medical Records. Based in Westborough, Mass., eClinicalWorks has additional offices in New York City and Alpharetta, Ga. For more information visit www.eclinicalworks.com .

About McKesson
McKesson Corporation, currently ranked 15th on the FORTUNE 500, is a healthcare services and information technology company dedicated to helping its customers deliver high-quality healthcare by reducing costs, streamlining processes, and improving the quality and safety of patient care. McKesson has been in continuous operation for more than 175 years, making it the longest-operating company in healthcare today. For more information, visit http://www.mckesson.com.

About Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance's proven applications and professional services. For more information, visit: www.nuance.com.

SOURCE: Nuance Communications, Inc.