April 13, 2021 | less than a minute read

Microsoft Enhances Health Care AI Portfolio With Nuance Acquisition

Katten

Microsoft's acquisition of Nuance Communications, a pioneer of conversational AI and ambient clinical intelligence (ACI), at a total valuation of $19.7 Billion, is demonstrative of the tech giant's willingness to flex its deep pockets and bet big on the future of AI in the health care industry. ACI technology intends to reduce physician burnout and increase efficiency by offloading administrative tasks onto computers, with the goal of enabling clinicians to dedicate more time to patient care. Studies show that physicians spend approximately 2 hours of paperwork for every hour of seeing patients, so with Microsoft's resources, there is real potential for Nuance to disrupt the delivery of health care.

With the acquisition of Burlington, Massachusetts-based Nuance – which will double Microsoft's total addressable market in the healthcare provider space, to nearly $500 billion – the Redmond, Washington, computing giant will continue to enhance its cloud-based decision support, AI-powered analytics and other cloud-based clinical workflow tools.