Generative AI is making its biggest healthcare splash yet after Microsoft-owned Nuance Communications unveiled DAX Express with GPT-4 integration.
Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) Express creates clinical note drafts from patient-provider conversations in a matter of seconds by eliminating the need for a human quality checker before clinicians can review and upload the notes to the EHR.
DAX Express is the first clinical documentation application to combine conversational and ambient AI with OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, but its main goal remains the same as its predecessor: reduce administrative burden so providers have more time to focus on patients.
- Following a nearly $20B acquisition in 2022, Nuance’s latest solution is also fully backed by Microsoft’s enterprise resources and the scale of the Azure cloud.
- That’s not to mention Microsoft’s recent $10B investment in OpenAI, which it’s clearly trying to monetize sooner rather than later. Starting this summer, DAX Express will be open for early access to all providers using DAX or Dragon Medical One.
When we spoke to Nuance Chief Strategy Officer Peter Durlach a few weeks ago about an older AI model that some readers might still remember – ChatGPT – he raised some good questions about AI’s future in healthcare.
- How do these models fit into regulatory guidelines?
- What’s the indication for use?
- Can you explain the black box?
- How will the FDA operate in the middle of this?
With how fast AI is moving, these questions are going to be front and center in discussions with everyone from patients to regulators. In the last month alone, we’ve seen Doximity leverage similar tech in its DocsGPT tool that lets providers quickly fax prior authorizations, and Google announced that its Med-PaLM 2 model is consistently passing medical exams at an expert level.
The Takeaway
It’s hard to believe that Nuance DAX Express is considered the “early stages” of generative AI given how transformative these models are right out of the gates. There’s already a tsunami of startups working on new AI-enabled healthcare products, but the fact that Nuance’s 550k physician user base is about to have access to DAX Express highlights how powerful platform and distribution advantages are going to be on a level playing field where everyone has access to similar magic on the backend.
