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  Today in Health it, the story is Microsoft and Nuance. And my take on that. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in Health IT a channel dedicated to keeping Health IT staff current and engaged today, no sponsor. Just wanna make you aware of a service we offer.

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Microsoft buys Nuance Communications for 16 billion. Here's the three bullet points, obviously. The first is the 16 billion number. Microsoft will buy nuance for $56 a share, about 23% premium over nuances. Closing price Friday. And nuanced technologies will be used in Microsoft's Healthcare Cloud products.

I think there's only really two paragraphs from this I want to cover. I talk a lot about the business IMP implications of this deal and where Microsoft's going from a growth strategy, but from a nuance standpoint and relevant to healthcare nuance, would be aligned with part of Microsoft business that serves businesses and governments.

So some of the language might sound a little off, but lemme just give you a couple paragraphs out of this. Microsoft has been trying to make inroads into the healthcare sector, selling more cloud software to hospitals and doctors. And by the way, that is the whole . Reason that Microsoft is making this acquisition, we'll get to that in just a moment.

It's been working with Nuance for two years on AI software that helps clinicians capture patient discussions and integrate them into electronic health records, and combining the speech technology company's products into its teams chat app for telehealth appointments. The nuance deal would be a trophy for Redmond, said Wedbush analyst, Dan Ives referring to Redmond, Washington based Microsoft nuances in the midst of an unprecedented strategic turnaround the last few years under the leadership of CEO Mark Benjamin.

And we believe the company represents a unique asset on the healthcare front for Microsoft under Benjamin Nuance has. Narrowed its focus and separated peripheral businesses such as Cranz, Inc. The automotive AI unit that was spun off two years ago. It also sold off another imaging unit as well. Let's go down a little bit.

As AI software gets better at parsing language and predicting medical needs, nuance in Microsoft may be able to develop technology that searches for certain words in health records to make better suggestions to doctors for patient care. This can really help Microsoft accelerate the digitization of the healthcare industry, which has lagged other sectors such as retail and banking Said.

A Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Analyst. The biggest near term benefit that I could see is in the area of telehealth where nuance transcription product. Is currently being used with Microsoft Teams last two paragraphs, the nuanced purchase will compliment efforts in recent years where Microsoft has assigned thousands of employees to its AI work and release tools customers can use to build applications that understand and translate speech.

Recognize images and detect anomalies. The company views AI as a key driver of future sales of cloud services, and I agree with that. The acquisition may also give Microsoft a boost as it faces fierce competition in the AI space with rivals such as Alphabet, Inc. Google and amazon.com Inc. Also investing heavily in the field.

All right, so that's the story. Microsoft has acquired Nuance, or they're in the process of acquiring. I'm sure it has some hoops to go through. What most people don't realize is that the Microsoft contract often represents the largest single outlay in most health systems. It budget. The trick for Microsoft is how to add to that number every year.

I've called Microsoft an arms dealer in the past, and that is what I believe they are. You can trust that Microsoft isn't going to stand up a healthcare practice. They aren't gonna try to compete with any healthcare organization, but they are going to sell them arms, sell them tools. The reason I make the distinction of, of an arms dealer is because they will sell to anyone.

They sell the tools you need to be successful and they don't take sides. You just sign the MSA, write the check, and we're all good. In fairness, this is the best company to partner with. They represent no threat other than the rising licensing costs to your health system. They'll give you a great set of tools that is competitive with the big four, Amazon, apple, Google.

Well, they are one of the big four Microsoft, and you don't need to really look over your shoulder once you sign that deal. This is a good move for Microsoft and I would notch this as a win. For my application rationalization initiative, if you're trying to simplify your environment, reduce the number of vendors, reduce the number of applications, this is a win for you.

Them signing that deal is a win for you. I have one less vendor. Microsoft will roll this in. It will be folded into their licensing and their tech stack. This is the first win. The second win will come when we start to see . Where Microsoft starts to apply this technology. There are countless opportunities in using voice in healthcare.

We've covered many of them on this week. In health it there's patient facing voice, provider facing voice with hundreds of use cases yet to be explored. I see this as a big win for healthcare and a big win for Microsoft. And the last thing to consider is that it was gonna take nuance forever to build the clinical dictionaries and

They now have a rich grandfather that just bought them who's gonna give them a fair amount of money to build out those clinical dictionaries. And that's key. That's key for the accuracy of the transcriptions and it's key for the application of it across the broader healthcare landscape. So this is a huge win for all of healthcare.

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