PITTSBURGH – The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and Nuance Communications have partnered to develop natural language processing solutions to alter the way that clinical data is captured and processed. The two are looking to extend the presence and functionality of clinical language understanding (CLU)-enabled technologies.

After nearly two years of extensive research and analysis of the industry by UPMC, Rasu Shrestha, MD, a radiologist and the vice president of medical information technology at UPMC, said it was essentially "a no-brainer to join with Nuance."

The Burlington, Mass.-based firm has solidified as a leader in the CLU field, explains Shrestha, and serves as "a perfect compliment to our desires in developing and utilizing this technology."

The Nuance-UPMC partnership is slated to span 10 years. The organizations will endeavor to develop "Medical Intelligence" solutions that utilize language processing tools and advanced transcription technology to streamline the clinical data collection process. Nuance's eScription platform will replace any transcription solutions already used by UPMC.

As prescribed by the agreement, the partnership will initially grapple with developing CLU technology and dictation tools. "It's about increasing specificity," explains Shrestha. The instruments are predicted to aid in the collection of relevant details for medical records. So as soon as the patient-doctor interaction begins, the necessary data is captured.

By the end of this year, the partnership is looking to create and distribute tools tailored to search and analyze clinical document repositories. "Data empowerment" – this is the key function emphasized by Shrestha.

As Rebecca Kaul, president of UPMC's Technology Development Center, explains, the motive behind the partnership can be distilled: it comes down to the importance of harnessing patient data, not just documenting it. "Together with Nuance we're trying to transform the way we use information, and change the way we provide care," she said. "In the past, information has really been something that has been captured, and not necessarily fully utilized."

It is vital, said Kaul, to recognize the potential of this data, and thus work on "investing in medical technologies to generate meaningful intelligence, and use it to provide meaningful care."

Shrestha, too, stresses the need for data utilization over pure documentation. "In the employment of electronic medical records as we know it today, what ends up happening is the creation of more and more silos of information," he says. "What we're trying to do with the development of Medical Intelligence solutions is to bring these data repositories to life."

In making a clinical decision, he explained, a doctor should be able to data mine: to sift easily through a patient's history in order to stay informed and thus provide the highest level of care. The unstructured free text format that characterizes most medical data today impedes this analytical process.

With Nuance technology to streamline clinical dictation and provide the ability for data mining, Shrestha is looking at the partnership to increase efficiency, decrease costs, and heighten the specificity of care that UPMC staff provides to patients.

"I'm really excited primarily because I see this as a paradigm shift in the way that we're capturing information and in the way that we're using information," he explained. "Before, when looking at a patient, we were essentially doing was required. … I will now have the ability to go back into a collection of data and mine for information. I can leverage reports to drive my current workflow. My decisions can be better informed."

The convenience associated with the partnership is predicted to extend to patients as well. Kaul and Shrestha point to the generation of "more face time" between patients and their care providers. "We'll spend less time interacting with our electronic medical records," explained Shrestha, "and that frees up time to actually spend with the patient."

As Kaul echoed, "Medical intelligence tools allow us to put the focus on the patient."

And from Nuance? Through the partnership, officials are looking to empower medical data and revolutionize the way care is provided as well:

"UPMC's deep expertise in medicine and patient care combined with Nuance's unmatched leadership in speech and language understanding technologies has the ability to change the face of healthcare delivery," said Paul Ricci, chairman and CEO of Nuance. "Together, we've entered into a unique and powerful collaboration that will accelerate the role healthcare IT plays in making clinical data more valuable."