Press Release

Nuance Unveils World’s First Open Artificial Intelligence Marketplace for Diagnostic Imaging

Nuance AI Marketplace Streamlines Use of AI for Detection, Diagnosis and Treatment of Disease

BURLINGTON, Mass. and CHICAGO, November 27, 2017 – Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today, at the Radiological Society of North America conference (RSNA) in Chicago, unveiled the Nuance AI Marketplace for Diagnostic Imaging, the first open platform for developers, data scientists and radiologists to accelerate the development, deployment, and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) for medical imaging.

The Nuance AI Marketplace for Diagnostic Imaging comes at a critical time for radiologists. Not only are they being inundated with incredible amounts of imaging data, they also face the pressing need to spend more time and expertise advancing patient care and less time on tedious processes and paperwork. The availability and acceptance of machine learning and AI algorithms through the AI Marketplace helps address these challenges by enabling care professionals to take advantage of data that has been collected across a range of disciplines.

The AI Marketplace unlocks the power of AI for all radiologists, 70 percent of whom in the U.S. already use Nuance’s PowerScribe radiology reporting and PowerShare image exchange network. Now, with the AI Marketplace, radiologists can quickly analyze medical imaging by readily accessing a wide array of algorithms trained on the huge volumes of imaging data, and then integrate them into their day-to-day workflow. It does this by providing radiologists and data scientists with the ability to define, build, publish and improve imaging algorithms, accelerating their creation and the adoption of imaging AI. The Nuance AI Marketplace is designed to be a prime source for imaging algorithms that augment the capabilities of radiologists and provide rapid, open access to the industry’s most advanced research.

Nuance is launching this initiative in conjunction with numerous partners, including NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA), which is democratizing the development and deployment of AI across multiple industries. In a separate announcement today, Nuance and NVIDIA unveiled a broader collaboration to advance the use of AI in radiology. Other organizations supporting the AI Marketplace include some of the nation’s leading healthcare and academic organizations, including the American College of Radiology, Ohio State University, Lunit, Radlogics, Aidence and Teracon.

“Nuance is in a unique position to help healthcare organizations realize the transformative power of AI for radiology,” said Karen Holzberger, Vice President and General Manager, Healthcare Diagnostics, Nuance. “The AI Marketplace will make accessible a global, continuously expanding set of trusted and clinically useful AI algorithms that integrate directly into the existing workflow of thousands of radiologists. This will help radiologists focus their skill and expertise where it will have the greatest impact – on improving patient care – while improving productivity, efficiency and outcomes.”


More specifically:

--Define and Build – AI developers can use a wide array of AI development platforms and leverage the Nuance PowerShare Network to feed these development environments with vast amounts of relevant imaging data from any authorized imaging repository regardless of physical location.

--Publish and Share – Using Nuance’s PowerShare Network, any AI developer, anywhere, can publish their properly approved, proprietary algorithms for use by the more than 20,000 radiologists who use PowerScribe.

--Access, Subscribe and Use – Any hospital or radiology group that uses PowerScribe can easily subscribe to any AI algorithms for imaging published in the PowerShare Network from any AI developer. Once an algorithm has been subscribed to, that algorithm will be automatically leveraged for relevant imaging studies and the appropriate AI-generated data will be sent to PowerScribe and/or will drive worklist prioritization – all designed to help radiologists work smarter and more efficiently.

Advances in imaging capabilities and increased deployment of imaging systems have resulted in the rapid growth of the volume and types of imaging data available. To derive clinical benefits from these systems, radiologists are spending more time on routine processes, rather than on diagnosis, consultation and patient treatment where their expertise is truly needed. With the rise of more powerful computing and cloud platforms, AI algorithms and deep learning tools are poised to help overcome this problem. These tools can leverage the vast amounts of imaging data that has been collected, and by augmenting human intelligence, improve the efficiency of disease detection, diagnosis and treatment.

“The American College of Radiology, through the ACR Data Science Institute™, will lead the AI framework for radiology by setting the standard for use cases, certifying algorithms, assessing performance and reporting through registries,” said American College of Radiology Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer Mike Tilkin. “We need the industry to support the standards and processes that the ACR DSI promotes. This will allow seamless integration of AI technology into the day-to-day radiology workflow. We congratulate Nuance for their early adoption of the ACR DSI standards in building their new Imaging AI Marketplace.”

“I believe that apps created, validated and shared in the Nuance AI Marketplace for Diagnostic Imaging can augment and improve all components of radiology practice,” said Dr. Woojin Kim, chief medical information officer, Healthcare, Nuance. “AI apps can help clinicians make better-informed decisions on image interpretation, report creation, communication of findings and other areas. The technology can also optimize worklists for radiologists, for example, re-sorting the worklist to elevate those exams that contain more critical and urgent findings, such as intracranial hemorrhage or pulmonary embolism.”

To learn more about the Nuance AI Marketplace for Diagnostic Imaging, download the whitepaper, “AI Access for All: The power and promise of AI for radiology." Nuance will demonstrate the capabilities of the AI Marketplace at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) Annual Meeting, at booth #2700 in South Hall A at McCormick Place, November 26 to December 1, in Chicago.

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