Nuance’s technology uses voice recognition, AI and natural language processing to streamline healthcare processes. Nuance will bolster Microsoft’s Cloud for Healthcare significantly.
Microsoft’s move to pay $19.7 billion in cash for Nuance Communications is a bet that it can be a digital healthcare operating system that pulls its cloud portfolio into an industry being transformed. The deal for Nuance comes as the enterprise and healthcare artificial intelligence company is just hitting its stride. Not only does Microsoft’s purchase of Nuance make more sense than rumored talks for TikTok, Pinterest and Discord, but the two companies are already partners and can drive revenue across the healthcare industry and enterprises. Nuance’s technology uses voice recognition, AI and natural language processing to streamline healthcare processes. The company in recent years has shed units and businesses to double down on what AI-driven healthcare under CEO Mark Benjamin, who will report to Scott Guthrie, chief of Microsoft cloud and AI businesses. Must read: In 2020,62% of Nuance’s revenue came from healthcare with the remainder attributed broadly to enterprises. For its part, Microsoft recently launched Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, which will be built out significantly with Nuance in the fold. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is making a big bet on industry-specific clouds. And the integration work may not be that significant since Nuance’s Dragon Ambient eXperience platform is intertwined with Microsoft Teams and aligned with Microsoft Azure. In 2019, Nuance and Microsoft combined on a healthcare stack that included speech recognition and processing, clinical documentation, decision support and Azure AI and natural language tools. Must read: The pitch from the two companies is that they could alleviate burnout by automating administrative tasks. That burnout has only been magnified during the COVID-19 pandemic.
