Nuance eScription Receives 7th Consecutive Best IN KLAS award

Nuance’s eScription Platform Honored with Seventh Consecutive Best-in-KLAS Award

Seven Consecutive Best in KLAS Awards, Market Growth and Continued Delivery of Innovation Reinforces eScription as Leading Solution for Hosted, Background Speech Recognition

BURLINGTON, Mass., – December 20, 2010 – Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today announced that its eScription platform has received a Best in KLAS award for the seventh consecutive year. With a score of 89.8, the eScription platform ranked the highest in the speech recognition category, surpassing its score from 2009 even as the platform’s usage has dramatically grown with both new and existing customers. Today, the number of active dictating clinicians who use eScription is up by 24 percent since one year ago.

The Best in KLAS Award is driven solely from customer feedback, a testament to the demonstrated benefits of the eScription platform and the service and support provided to eScription customers. According to Nuance’s review of past Top 20 Best in KLAS Awards reports, Nuance is one of only four other healthcare IT vendors that have achieved a Best in KLAS product award for the past seven consecutive years. As noted in the KLAS report, 98 percent of customers surveyed indicated they would buy eScription again; this high level of customer satisfaction and confidence comes in 12 percentage points higher than the next highest ranked background speech solution.

“Throughout our partnership with Nuance, the eScription platform has never disappointed and in fact, has met or exceeded all expectations,” said Jonathan Bowers, Vice President Information Services, Carolinas HealthCare System.  “eScription’s ranking as the best speech recognition solution does not come as a surprise.  In 2006, we leveraged KLAS’ ratings as part of our speech recognition vendor selection; our diligence and intuition to partner with Nuance was validated. Today, we’ve reduced report turnaround time by an average of 75 percent, realized significant cost savings and as we approach an annual run rate of 100 million lines through the platform, we are confident with eScription as our standard speech recognition solution across all Carolinas HealthCare System sites.”  

Nuance’s focus on customer satisfaction was echoed at the recent annual Conversations Healthcare 2010 user meeting, where 39 healthcare organizations were recognized for saving one million dollars or more on medical transcription costs as a result of implementing eScription. Cumulatively, eScription Million Dollar Award recipients have reported savings of more than $140 million.

“2010 marks the eScription platform’s seventh consecutive Best in KLAS award, a year of growth for the platform and a year of innovation across our portfolio,” said Janet Dillione, executive vice president, Nuance Healthcare. “Nuance is honored to be recognized by KLAS and by our customers. This distinction comes at an exciting time, one in which we are focused on delivering more value to our customer base and the healthcare industry at large.”

Emphasizing Nuance’s commitment to innovation, earlier this month Nuance launched Dragon Medical Mobile Recorder, an iPhone app that offers clinicians a new level of clinical documentation flexibility by enabling mobile point-of-care dictation that is connected to Nuance’s speech-enabled transcription platforms, including eScription.

2010 Top 20 Best in KLAS Awards were determined based on 25 performance criteria in five categories: Sales and Contracting; Implementation and Training; Functionality and Upgrades; Service and Support; and General. KLAS, a market research firm, published its latest findings in the 2010 Top 20 Best in KLAS Awards: Software & Professional Services report (December 2010). The product rankings are derived from product evaluations and confidential interviews with healthcare information technology (HIT) customers, incorporating performance data collected over the past 12 months (November 15, 2009 – November 15, 2010).

eScription is Nuance Healthcare’s leading on-demand, enterprise-wide transcription platform.  Whether a healthcare organization has an in-house staff of medical transcriptionists (MTs) or uses a fully outsourced approach, eScription is proven to help healthcare organizations reduce document turnaround time, improve consistency and quality, and save costs, without impacting clinician workflow.

About KLAS

KLAS is a research firm specializing in monitoring and reporting the performance of healthcare vendors. KLAS’ mission is to improve delivery, by independently measuring vendor performance for the benefit of our healthcare provider partners, consultants, investors, and vendors. Working together with executives from over 4500 hospitals and over 2500 clinics, KLAS delivers timely reports, trends, and statistics, which provide a solid overview of vendor performance in the industry. KLAS measures performance of software, professional services, and medical equipment vendors. For more information, go to www.KLASresearch.com, email marketing@KLASresearch.com, or call 1-800-920-4109 to speak with a KLAS representative. © 2008 KLAS Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved.

Nuance’s Healthcare Business

Nuance’s healthcare portfolio of proven, speech-enabled clinical documentation and communication solutions enable healthcare provider organizations to improve financial performance, enhance patient care, and increase patient safety. With more than 10,000 healthcare provider organization customers and 450,000 clinician customers worldwide, Nuance has the experience and solutions that meet the individual needs of any size healthcare provider organization.

Nuance Communications, Inc.

Nuance is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications and professional services. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.

Nuance and the Nuance logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

The statements in this press release, relating to future plans or future events or services, are forward-looking statements which are subject to specific risks and uncertainties.  There are a number of factors which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those indic
ated in such forward looking statements, including fluctuations in demand for the Nuance products, the relationship with the customer or partner and the continued development of Nuance products.  The reader is warned not to rely on these forward-looking statements without reservation, since these are simply reflections of the current situation.  Nuance disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this document.

eScription racks up a 7th consecutive “Best in KLAS” concurrent with a big expansion in the user base up by 24% since last year.
This is a huge testament to the Nuance team who have worked tirelessly to maintain quality and customer service and contributed over $140 Million dollars in savings to multiple healthcare organizations
Thanks to the customers for their vote of confidence and congratulations to the Nuance team who continue to excel at delivering increasing value to the healthcare industry