Northwestern Medicine has selected Microsoft subsidiary Nuance Communications' Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) Copilot embedded in Epic for improving the experiences of patients and physicians.  

This deployment is part of the Illinois-based healthcare system's initiative to use innovative technologies to support its academic, research, as well as administrative functions.  

The integration is expected to improve productivity by automating clinical documentation and reducing administrative tasks for healthcare professionals.  

According to Nuance, by leveraging the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, the DAX Copilot helps in transforming physician-patient conversations into valuable tools for reducing clinical documentation burdens.  

This is aimed at enhancing patient experiences and streamlining physician workflows.  

The ambient voice solution has already shown promising outcomes, including a reduction in time spent on notes and administrative tasks for Northwestern Medicine physicians, Nuance noted.  

Use of the DAX Copilot has also led to increased physician satisfaction by lessening administrative workloads.  

System use data, cited by Nuance, indicates a 24% decrease in time spent on notes and a 17% reduction in late-night administrative tasks.  

In addition, physicians who use the DAX Copilot for at least half of their patient encounters have seen an average increase of 11.3 patients per month. 

Northwestern Medicine also experienced improved clinical documentation accuracy, better retention, and increased revenue through higher patient throughput and additional services.  

For instance, users of the DAX Copilot have achieved higher Level of Service coding, which can contribute to enhanced financial performance. 

Northwestern Memorial HealthCare chief wellness executive Gaurava Agarwal said: “Northwestern Medicine is committed to providing a superior work environment that promotes wellbeing, and implementing DAX Copilot will allow our physicians to spend more quality time with our patients, focusing on their needs rather than on paperwork and data entry. 

“This will improve overall patient experience while enhancing wellbeing of our physicians, enabling them to deliver care more effectively and with greater satisfaction.” 

DAX Copilot is part of Nuance's extensible Dragon Medical platform, which is already used by over 600,000 clinicians globally.  

This platform allows clinicians to securely capture patient stories using voice recognition technology, and DAX Copilot deployment is expected to further optimise these capabilities at Northwestern Medicine. 

In March 2024, Stanford Health Care – Stanford Medicine announced the deployment of the DAX Copilot.