Nuance Communications this week introduced new healthcare documentation solutions driven by its Clinical Language Understanding (CLU) technology.

CLU, a healthcare-specific natural language processing technology, can identify and relate medical facts and “understand” what caregivers are saying. 
 
"Clinical language understanding technology provides robust analytics capabilities to better understand what's happening with patients as care is delivered over time and in multiple locations," said Dr. Rasu Shrestha, vice president of medical information technology at UPMC, a healthcare provider based in Pittsburgh. "We've partnered with Nuance to capture rich clinical data through speech-enabled workflows, and together we are creating CLU-driven solutions that will convert that data into intelligence to improve operational processes and the delivery of care." 
 
Other Nuance product innocations in the healthcare and CLU area include the following: 

• Actionable Clinical Insight – with QualityAnalytics, an intelligent, CLU-driven data analysis engine that provides actionable, clinical insight across the healthcare enterprise. QualityAnalytics can consume unstructured, narrative-based physician documentation and convert it into concurrent, actionable information.
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• Transition to ICD-10 – Computer-Assisted Physician Documentation technology, which combines Nuance's speech recognition and CLU capabilities with 3M Health Information Systems' clinical documentation improvement and coding expertise.   

"High-quality clinical documentation is fundamental to operational and clinical success. It is also a driving element to progress and transition associated with EHRs and ICD-10," said Lori Jayne, privacy officer and health information management director at Lahey. "At Lahey we're partnering with technology leaders, like 3M and Nuance, that can support our healthcare enterprise from the time data is captured, through care delivery and at every instance where there is an opportunity to leverage better data to improve processes and decisions. Technologies like speech recognition, computer-assisted physician documentation, and clinical language understanding engage our nurses, physicians, coders, and others to ensure we are operating under best practices as we collect and use clinical information to drive a real improvements for our business and for our patients." 
 
"Nuance is not only supporting healthcare organizations' documentation processes, we are improving it and evolving it," said Janet Dillione, executive vice president and general manager of Nuance Healthcare.

"To date, the healthcare industry has struggled to unlock meaning from unstructured clinical documentation without intensive, manual analysis," Dillone continued, noting that the  new CLU-driven technologies "will enable healthcare organizations to capture, understand, and use their data more intelligently across the healthcare enterprise than ever before."