MedQuist Holdings Tuesday announced it is changing its name to M*Modal, unifying the company's advanced speech and language understanding technologies, medical transcription, coding, HIM professional services, and analytics.

"Aligning our technology and services is a natural evolution of our stated company direction as we work to deliver solutions that help hospitals, physicians, and other providers improve care while addressing many of the significant challenges facing healthcare today," said Vern Davenport, chairman and CEO of M*Modal, in a statement. "Our deep experience in medical transcription, coding, and clinical documentation workflow, combined with industry-leading innovative technology and a focus on the healthcare market, provides us with a strong platform to grow our core business, expand to underpenetrated markets, and increase our partners within the healthcare ecosystem while investing in new technology offerings."

In August 2011, MedQuist Holdings merged with M*Modal, a provider of advanced speech and natural language understanding technology. Shares of MedQuist's common stock will begin trading on NASDAQ under the symbol "MODL" on January 25.

The move also supports the company's plans to expand the core transcription business, open new markets, and significantly increase the sales force and development resources, as well as leverage its intellectual property portfolio.

M*Modal clients now have access to end-to-end clinical documentation solutions that help caregivers capture the patient's complete clinical story, extract meaningful information used to populate electronic health records (EHRs), and automate the data used to feed business processes such as coding, billing, and revenue cycle management.

"In the past, much of the patient's story was locked in the transcription text. Opportunities to share information were missed because there was no connection between the text and other data systems," said Davenport. "Today, our tools aren't just converting voice to text—they're analyzing that text and identifying critical information that provides a higher degree of insight and richer context for improved clinical and financial decision making."

The company's technology-enabled services include cloud-based speech understanding technology that allows physicians to capture the patient's story anytime, anywhere using any electronic device, as well as natural language understanding technology that instantly converts the narrative into structured clinical documents that can be shared and integrated with existing workflows or EHRs. Additional M*Modal tools, such as Computer-Assisted Coding for ICD-10 migration, automate business practices, enhance reporting capabilities, and enable comprehensive analysis that increases productivity and optimizes revenue.

By focusing on three main areas—engagement (capturing the patient's story), collaboration (sharing that story with care teams and integrating it with existing business processes like coding), and intelligence (extracting meaningful data that satisfies reporting requirements and enables better clinical and financial decisions)—M*Modal's solutions accelerate EHR adoption, enhance regulatory compliance, and provide deeper insight that supports the introduction of new care delivery models, the company said.

Currently, the company provides technologies and services to 2,400 hospitals and clinics— including some of the nation's leading healthcare institutions, 850 physician practices, and 165,000 physicians, as well as leading EHR providers and medical transcription organizations.