The Saykara acquisition underscores Nuance's ongoing expansion of market and technical leadership in conversational artificial intelligence (AI) and ambient clinical intelligence (ACI) solutions that reduce clinician burnout, enhance patient experiences, and improve overall health systems' intelligence and integrity. For Nuance, the acquisition also adds important complementary AI technology and engineering talent.
"The complementary technology built by the Saykara team aligns strongly with our technology portfolio and growth strategy as well as the needs of our clients," says Joe Petro, Nuance Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. "This acquisition welcomes some familiar and highly respected technology leaders whom I am excited to have join our research and development team, which consists of the best and brightest minds in applying AI and machine learning to healthcare. With a shared vision, we will continue our aggressive focus on innovation, growth, and on delivering industry-leading AI-powered solutions that meaningfully address the compelling business problems that our healthcare clients and their clinicians face every day."
Saykara was founded in Seattle in 2015 by Harjinder Sandhu, PhD, a serial entrepreneur who previously served as an executive in Nuance's R&D division. Sandhu and Saykara's team of leading engineers, machine learning experts, and experienced technology executives will now join Nuance's research and development team.
"I welcome the opportunity to rejoin the market leader in conversational AI and ambient clinical intelligence, and the impressive Nuance research and development team – especially at this important juncture in the development and adoption of these AI-powered healthcare innovations," says Saykara Founder and CEO Harjinder Sandhu. "We are very familiar with Nuance's advanced technology, domain expertise, and world-class technical team and share the company's mission to make what matters to alleviate the clinical documentation burden on clinicians around the world."
Nuance is the brand that is more directly connected with all the pioneering efforts in text recognition, voice to text transcription, and natural language interfaces - since the times of Raymond Kurzweil, ScanSoft and the partnership with Apple to create what is now Siri, the first widely available voice assistant. Nuance Communications is now a company with regained focus, pursuing a consistent policy of acquisitions in voice and AI, while gradually divesting from its former Dragon transcription technologies. Nuance recently announced the sale of its medical transcription and electronic healthcare record businesses, as it increases its focus on AI speech recognition, and natural language technologies.
The Burlington, Massachusetts-based company stands on a solid financial position. As Mark Benjamin, Chief Executive Officer at Nuance confirmed in its recent first quarter 2021 results call, it continues to advance its strategic initiatives, accelerating the transition to the cloud of all its core platforms in Healthcare, and focusing on new AI-based solutions for other vertical enterprise markets.
"Saykara is a like-minded healthcare IT company that aligns well with our technology portfolio and growth strategy. This acquisition brings together the best and brightest minds in AI, machine learning, and ambient technologies for healthcare, and we are pleased to be adding even more leading scientists and developers to our world-class R&D team," says Mark Benjamin.
Nuance has been recently recognized for the fourth consecutive year as the highest-rated vendor in Opus Research's Decision Makers' Guide to Enterprise Intelligent Assistants. The report provides a comprehensive assessment of enterprise-grade intelligent assistant solution providers who bring natural language processing, machine learning, AI, and analytics to power customer and employee care and digital self-service.
"Intelligent assistants have moved into a new phase of adoption as thousands of firms employ chatbots, voicebots, or virtual agents to improve customer experience and employee productivity," says Dan Miller, lead analyst, Opus Research. "Their challenge is to make intelligent assistants proficient, scalable and omni channel. Nuance scored highly with solutions that include a flexible, customizable platform that is open combined with professional services that allow enterprises to employ a mix of AI and live agents."
Nuance Communications has been building AI‑powered solutions that amplify human intelligence, and is a technology pioneer with market leadership in conversational AI and ambient intelligence. In the healthcare space, Nuance is a full-service partner trusted by 90 percent of U.S. hospitals and 85 percent of the Fortune 100 companies worldwide.
www.saykara.com
www.nuance.com
