Microsoft and Nuance announce GPT4-based clinical notes application

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Velib bicycles are parked in front of the headquarters of US computer and microcomputer company Microsoft on January 25, 2023 in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France.

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Microsoft’s speech recognition subsidiary Nuance Communications on Monday announced Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) Express, a clinical notes application for healthcare professionals powered by artificial intelligence.

DAX Express aims to help reduce physician administrative burdens by automatically generating a draft of a clinical note seconds after a patient visit. The technology is powered by a combination of ambient AI, which forms insights from unstructured data like conversations, and OpenAI’s newest model, GPT-4.

Diana Nole, executive vice president of Nuance’s healthcare division, told CNBC that the company wants to see physicians “return to the joy of medicine” so they can care for more patients.

“Our ultimate goal is to reduce this cognitive burden, to reduce the amount of time they actually have to spend on these administrative tasks,” he said.

Microsoft will acquire Nuance for approximately $16 billion in 2021. The company generates revenue by selling tools for speech recognition and transcription during doctor visits, customer service calls and voice messages.

DAX Express complements other existing services that Nuance already has on the market.

Nole said the technology will be enabled through Nuance’s Dragon Medical One voice recognition application, used by more than 550,000 physicians. Dragon Medical One is a cloud-based workflow assistant that doctors can use using their voice, allowing them to navigate clinical systems and quickly access patient information. Clinical notes generated by DAX Express will appear on the Dragon Medical One desktop.

DAX Express also builds on the original DAX application Nuance launched in 2020. DAX converts verbal patient visits into clinical notes and sends them through a human review process to ensure they are accurate and of high quality. Notes appear in your medical record within four hours of your appointment.

DAX Express, on the other hand, generates clinical notes in seconds so doctors can instantly review their patients’ automated visit summaries.

“We believe doctors, clinicians are going to want a combination of all of these because every specialty is different, every patient encounter is different. And you want to have efficient tools for all these various types of visits,” Nole said.

Nuance did not provide CNBC with details on the cost of these applications. The company said the price of Nuance’s technology varies based on the number of users and the size of a particular healthcare system.

DAX Express will initially be available in private preview this summer. Nole said Nuance doesn’t know when the technology will be more widely available, as it will depend on the feedback the company receives from its early adopters.

Patient information is particularly sensitive and regulated by HIPAA and other laws. Alysa Taylor, corporate vice president of the Azure group at Microsoft, told CNBC that DAX Express adheres to the core tenets of Microsoft’s responsible AI framework, which guides all of the company’s AI investments, as well as additional security measures that Nuance has in place. Nuance has data agreements with its customers and the data is fully encrypted and runs in HIPAA compliant environments.

Nole added that while AI will help doctors and clinicians do administrative work, professionals are still involved every step of the way. Physicians can make changes to notes generated by DAX Express and sign them before they are entered into a patient’s electronic health record.

He said that ultimately, using DAX Express will help improve both the patient and physician experience.

“The doctor and the patient can just face each other, they can communicate directly,” Nole said. “The patient feels listened to. It’s a very reliable experience.”

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