Cerner Integrates Nuance DAX Into Flagship EHR Platform

Nuance Communications continues to strengthen its relationship with the Cerner Corporation. Cerner is best known for its Cerner Millennium electronic health record (EHR), which leverages Nuance’s Dragon Medical Platform to simplify medical recordkeeping procedures.

The two companies expanded on that partnership in 2020, when Cerner added Nuance’s voice assistant technology to allow medical workers to navigate healthcare records with voice commands. They are now taking that one step further to allow doctors to generate new records with similar voice technology. Cerner will specifically be integrating Nuance’s Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) solution into the Millennium platform to speed up documentation.

In doing so, Nuance and Cerner are hoping to reduce the administrative burden on healthcare professionals, and to address the high rate of clinical burnout during the pandemic. They noted that most healthcare schedules only give staff 15 minutes for each patient appointment, which is a problem because the average Cerner EHR session lasts more than 16 minutes. The use of Nuance’s DAX technology should help lower that number, since it can identify keywords referring to things like allergies, medications, and procedures and automatically add them to a patient’s record. The platform negates the need for manual input, and allows doctors to devote their attention to patients instead of paperwork.

“Cerner is focused on putting the patient and caregiver at the center of all we do,” said Cerner Chief Health Officer Nasim Afsar. “By strengthening our collaboration with Nuance to automate administrative tasks, we will help caregivers get back to caring for patients and ensure they get the care they need.”

“Health systems that have deployed Nuance DAX are creporting improvements in physician satisfaction, patient experience, and documentation quality,” added Nuance EVP and Healthcare GM Diana Nole. “Deeper integration with Cerner will streamline workflows while enhancing the essential value of the EHR for delivering care.”

Nuance and Cerner announced the new arrangement at this week’s HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition. They project that the number of healthcare workers will be 3.2 million short of the demand by 2026, especially if burnout goes unaddressed. In the meantime, Microsoft completed its acquisition of Nuance earlier this month.

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March 18, 2022 – by Eric Weiss