Nuance to buy eScription

After Dictaphone in 2006, it is eScription’s turn to merge with Nuance. Here is an X-ray of the transaction that is about to take place in the speech-recognition-vendor supermarket:

• Seller: eScription, a software vendor specializing in transcription, back-end speech recognition and workflow management applications for healthcare.
• Buyer: Nuance Communications, giant provider of speech technology solutions – such as Dictaphone and Dragon Naturally Speaking – for consumers and businesses around the world.
• Value: $400 million (compared to $357 million paid for Dictaphone in February 2006)
• Payment:
  • $340 million in cash
  • $23 million in Nuance common stock
  • Assumption of vested employee options with a value of about $37 million
• Time frame: deal is expected to close in Nuance’s fiscal third quarter of 2008.
• Claimed objectives:
  • “Enhance Nuance’s ability to provide advanced transcription solutions”
  • “Evolve healthcare documentation and lower transcription costs by more than $1 billion over the next few years.”

The piece of news went public yesterday in the form of an official press release. The question is not so much whether this new deal will shake the competitive landscape, but more along the lines of a deeper, truly existential concern: “who’s next on Nuance’s shopping list?”

> Read press release

SpeechMagic / Dragon Comparison – Response to Reader Comment

I would like to reply to the following comment from Eric Jacques: “Wouldn’t it make more sense to compare SpeechMagic to PowerScribe?” in response to the following thread: “Risking a SpeechMagic-Dragon Comparison?”

Dear Eric,

Comparing SpeechMagic and PowerScribe would be like comparing an engine to a car. It is indeed important to differentiate:

• The speech recognition engine technologies
• The enterprise solutions that integrate the above technologies and are offered to healthcare facilities as part of a comprehensive dictation/workflow management package.

In today’s marketplace, vendors of dictation/workflow solutions are typically powered by one of the two major speech recognition engines: Dragon or SpeechMagic. Hence the importance to compare these two in the first place.

What makes it slightly more confusing in the case of PowerScribe is that:

• PowerScribe is a Dictaphone product
• PowerScribe is powered by Dragon
• Dragon is a Scansoft product
• Scansoft bought Nuance in 2005 but chose to keep on doing business under the name Nuance
• Nuance acquired Dictaphone in 2006.

Still following?

So if PowerScribe was to be compared to any system, it would be to a range of enterprise solutions such as:

• Crescendo Speech Processing (powered by SpeechMagic)
• Dolbey Fusion Speech (powered by SpeechMagic)
  
• MedQuist SpeechQ (powered by SpeechMagic)
• Dictaphone Enterprise Express (powered by Dragon)
• SoftMed Speech Recognition (now powered by SpeechMagic since 3M merger)

Medical Times Middle East features Speech Recognition

Medical Times Middle East recently dedicated an article to healthcare speech recognition based on interviews conducted at ArabHealth. Editor Vernon Baxter starts off the article by questioning Bill Gates’ 1997 prediction (“in this 10-year time frame…we will have perfected speech recognition and speech output”) in the light of present achievements.

“Gates may have been a little optimistic with his prediction, but voice-recognition is finally making inroads into healthcare (…) With the increasing presence of electronic medical records in clinics, the potential benefits of a voice-activated interface have never been greater.

Baxter goes on to comment the state-of-the-union between vendors and client healthcare organizations, quoting top vendor executives along the way, including:

– Koen Schoof, senior product manager, dictation and healthcare, EMEA, Nuance Communication.

– Costa Mandilaras, president, Crescendo Systems Corporation.

– James McPherson, project and client manager, Voice Technologies.

> Read article