Nuance Communications has demonstrated at a US medical convention a workflow for extracting discrete data from paper records and automatically populating appropriate fields in medical documents. This solution conforms to document management standards required for US federal government funding programs designed to kickstart the transition to electronic health records.

The healthcare industry continues to rely on paper-based information for many critical processes. According to the US Healthcare Index the US uses 4,969,875,500 sheets of paper every year just for the processing of healthcare claims and payments. 

In addition, approximately 60 percent of the 1.2 billion clinical documents produced in the United States each year are in unstructured form (like dictated notes or paper records), requiring manual processing to make this health data actionable. A significant portion of this paper contains information that is needed to complete electronic forms, and could easily be scanned to convert into electronic form.

“There is a tremendous amount of important clinical data contained in paper-based records,” said Michael Rich, senior vice president and general manager, Nuance Document Imaging. 

“By creating a method to automatically extract and manage this information, Nuance enhances the accuracy and availability of patient records. With better records, hospitals are able to improve patient care, directly impacting the bottom line for hospitals and others in the healthcare industry.”

The solution integrates Nuance’s Clinical Language Understanding (CLU) capabilities and Imaging scanning technologies to automatically extract discrete patient data from paper records and populate the appropriate fields in medical documents. 

In addition,Nuance has completed interoperability testing for the transmission of patient records with several EHR systems by enabling users to convert scanned document images and securely transmit them directly into a patient’s record.

“We see exceptional value in incorporating this new state-of-art CLU-powered image scanning technology into our suite of computer assisted clinical documentation and coding solutions,” said Peter Durlach, senior vice president of marketing, product management & strategy, Nuance Healthcare. 

“Using Nuance to convert paper-based patient information into electronic and actionable clinical data, provides our healthcare customers with unmatched performance as they work to meet the demanding federal Meaningful Use and ICD-10 requirements.”

For additional detail on Nuance’s testing,  read Nuance’s blog post, “EHR Trifecta: Document Scanning, CLU and Integration Standards.”