King Fahd Hospital of the University of Damman Chooses Nuance’s Advanced Speech Recognition

Prestigious King Fahd Hospital of the Damman University to use Dragon Medical 360 | Network Edition to aid Physicians in Care Delivery and Students in their Training

KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia - Tuesday, April 30th 2013 [ME NewsWire]

(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Emerging Technologies announced today that Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd University Hospital is to implement the Nuance Healthcare Dragon Medical 360 | Network Edition hospital-wide in a bid to deliver a truly 21st century healthcare experience.

All 550-plus clinicians at this major Middle Eastern teaching hospital will use the Nuance speech recognition solution as part of a drive to link all aspects of hospital IT with their electronic medical records (EMR) platform.

King Fahd University Hospital in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, is a major facility with 600 beds, utilizing both a bespoke computerized clinical and separate bespoke administrative system to support patient care. All patients have secure electronic medical records linked to them by unique numeric IDs.

The hospital has commenced rollout of the Dragon Medical 360 | Network Edition – the first such deployment of this market-leading medical speech recognition system in not just the Kingdom, but the whole region.

Nuance’s trusted local implementation partner, Emerging Technologies, is leading all training, deployment and on-going support of the project – working closely with QuadraMed, the provider of King Fahd’s hospital information system (HIS).

Dragon Medical will be deployed in one single, coordinated rollout, making use of a ‘train the trainer’ approach to ensure rapid adoption. The project is expected to take place within an eight week time-frame, say the partners.

The speech recognition solution will allow all clinicians to accurately create and update medical notes using their spoken voice for inclusion within the QuadraMed system. It will also serve to boost the overall level of documentation, slash administrative costs by curbing the need for secretarial support for services such as transcription, and move the entire environment to a ‘paperless’ destination.

As part of the project, students will also have their academic progress closely monitored, and improved documentation centrally stored and managed, while doctors in every department of the hospital will use the new system.

“We are very excited about the possibilities Dragon Medical offers our users,” comments Dr Turki Gasim, Medical Informatics Director at the institution, while the University’s President, Dr Abdullah Al Rubaish comments, “This investment proves the determination of our administration to use the very best tools to deliver the very best training and care.”

“The delivery of this first site licence version installation of Dragon Medical in the Middle East offers great security of service and support for King Fahd," notes Sassine Mazraani, CEO of Emerging Technologies, the company working with the hospital to introduce the platform.

Mazraani adds that his team is looking forward to working with the hospital to showcase how speech recognition can reduce the hospital’s length of stay and speed medical treatment by decreasing the amount of time doctors wait for vital medical information.

“We are also very excited to work with the Hospital in enhancing healthcare decision making, diagnostic reliability and treatment outcomes via this mature and proven platform," Mazraani says.

“This use of Dragon Medical in such a major Middle Eastern hospital context is a milestone for us, and patients and doctors,” adds Nuance Healthcare’s Middle East Sales Director, Lincoln Payne. “It shows both the commitment of the Kind Fahd Hospital and the University of Damman to innovation and the creation of a fully digital patient environment, as well as the power of speech recognition in more aspects of the patient journey in modern IT-enabled healthcare.”

Contacts

Peter Aziz

Emerging Technologies

Tel: +971 2 681 1756

peter@em-t.com