Conversational AI specialist Nuance and software giant Microsoft are partnering to help reduce the amount of administrative work associated with documenting patient care. The agreement will see both companies accelerate the delivery of ambient clinical intelligence technologies, which can help improve productivity by streamlining administrative tasks. ACI is built on Nuance's Dragon Medical One cloud platform and speech recognition and natural language understanding technology, enhanced by the company's domain expertise and healthcare optimized conversational AI solutions already in use around the world. The partnership between Microsoft and Nuance combines Nuance's expertise in conversational AI, clinical documentation and decision-support solutions for healthcare with Microsoft's strengths in delivering cloud and AI solutions. The two companies will also work closely in sync with their electronic health record partners to improve the clinician experience.

Today, Microsoft and Nuance Communications announced a strategic partnership to accelerate the development of Nuance's Ambient Clinical Intelligence (ACI) solution, announced at HIMSS earlier this year. Built on Microsoft Azure, the partnership will bring together the two companies' strengths in developing ambient sensing and conversational AI solutions in order to reduce the burden of clinical documentation, so doctors can focus more time on patients. Physician burnout is at epidemic levels. A recent study shows that primary care doctors now spend two hours on administrative tasks for every hour they're involved in direct patient care. Physicians reported one to two hours of after-hours work each night, mostly related to administrative tasks.

Imagine a visit to your doctor's office in which your physician asks you how you've been feeling, whether your medication is working or if the shoulder pain from an old fall is still bothering you -- and his or her focus is entirely on you and that conversation. The doctor is looking at you, not at a computer screen. He or she isn't moving a mouse around hunting for an old record or pecking on the keyboard to enter a diagnosis code. This sounds like an ideal scenario, but as most people know from their own visits to the doctor, it's far from the norm today. But experts say that in an exam room of the future enhanced by artificial intelligence, the doctor would be able to call up a lab result or prescribe a new medicine with a simple voice command.

Physician burnout is one of the most serious conditions in today's medical profession. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality defines the condition as "a long-term stress reaction caused by emotional exhaustion [and] depersonalization," among other factors. According to the American Medical Association, physicians suffer from considerable stress caused by facets of their job that have little to do with actually providing personalized patient care. The AMA reports that physicians spend up to six hours daily working with electronic health records (EHRs) to adhere to government and hospital documentation requirements. That's six hours not spent seeing patients, and thus not having the time to listen carefully and diagnose, empathize, hold a hand, speak with family members, or explain conditions and next steps.