BURLINGTON, MA, September 16, 2008 — Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN), today unveiled its Dragon® Medical 10 software, the fastest, most accurate, real-time medical speech recognition software released to date. The new Dragon Medical 10 software recognizes dictation nearly twice as fast as its previous release and yields an accuracy improvement of more than 20 percent over the previous release. Dragon Medical 10 offers new medical vocabularies, improved integration with electronic medical record (EMR) systems, enhanced regional accent support, and customizable commands, like Voice Shortcuts and DragonTemplates.

Dragon Medical 10 is a part of the world’s best-selling speech recognition software family, Dragon NaturallySpeaking®, and is one of many offerings in Nuance’s healthcare portfolio of proven, speech-enabled clinical documentation and communication solutions.

Dragon Medical is used by more than 70,000 caregivers today in hospitals and physician practices across private, public and government settings. Dragon Medical 10 lets physicians create medical documents and emails, search the Web, control their PC and EMR entirely by voice, saving time and boosting productivity as compared to typing and mouse navigation alone. By enabling clinicians to rapidly and completely document patient encounters via their voice, Dragon Medical reduces transcription costs, improves clinician productivity, enhances patient care and increases insurer reimbursement.

More on Dragon Medical 10:

Real-time Speech Recognition Makes EMRs Use Faster and Easier
Dragon Medical 10 is the only Dragon NaturallySpeaking edition that enables clinicians to dictate directly into an EMR system, and rapidly edit and sign medical reports, speeding data input, reducing clicking and typing and, in turn, accelerating EMR utilization. Dragon Medical is available for integration with any Windows®- or Citrix®-based EMR system, including, but not limited to, those from Allscripts™, Epic, Misys®, GE® Healthcare, NextGen®, Siemens, eClinicalWorks®, Meditech, McKesson®, Cerner and Eclipsys®.
Real-time, Clinical Documentation Reduces Operating Costs
By using Dragon Medical’s highly-accurate, real-time speech recognition capabilities, clinicians are able to provide detailed clinical notes than typing or EMR point-and-click templates alone, without the costs or delays associated with manual transcription.
More Detailed Documentation Drives Better Patient Care
According to physicians, the narrative is the most important part of a patient note. A medical record that combines point-and-click EMR templates with dictated physician narrative promotes ongoing higher quality care via complete and patient specific information that clearly articulates the unique story of every patient encounter. By using Dragon Medical, critical patient documentation is available immediately for other care providers to access electronically.
Less Typing Makes Clinicians Up to 25 Percent More Efficient
Eliminating reliance on typing allows clinicians to spend more time practicing medicine and up to 25 percent less time documenting care, when compared to using a non voice-enabled EMR. With Dragon Medical 10’s new macro capability, clinicians can create customized voice shortcuts for common phrases or larger blocks of text that can include embedded fields. Abbreviated voice commands such as “patient history,” speeds up documentation and associated desktop, EMR or Web search and navigation tasks.
More Complete Documentation Helps Increase and Speed Reimbursement
By dictating the narrative component of the patient visit versus just typing or relying on point-and-click EMR templates, Dragon Medical enables physicians to document the encounter in a more complete manner resulting in higher and more appropriate reimbursement. In addition, by completing clinical documentation in real-time, healthcare providers can improve their entire reimbursement cycle.
Clinical Dictation Requires Robust and Highly-Tuned Medical Speech Recognition Vocabularies
Dragon Medical 10 supports more than 75 medical disciplines, from family medicine and internal medicine to orthopedics and cardiology with proprietary medical speech recognition vocabularies. With these specialized vocabularies, Dragon Medical has proven to be up to 38 percent more accurate than non-medical speech recognition software in clinical settings.
Accent Recognition Knows What You’re Saying, No Matter Where You’re From
As 30 percent of U.S. physicians are born foreign, Dragon Medical 10 now calibrates to regional accents through an initial voice screening process. The software automatically adapts to a variety of U.S., Southeast Asian, Indian and Hispanic accents.
Nearly Twice as Fast as Previous Versions
With Dragon Medical 10, clinicians will see their dictated text appear almost instantaneously, noticing a dramatic reduction in the time it takes for the software to recognize what is being dictated, significantly improving user experience.
Rapid Deployment with No Custom IT Integration Required
As a result of Dragon Medical’s ability to enable direct dictation into EMRs and other clinical information systems, healthcare provider organizations can rapidly deploy the software without any customized IT integration or interface development efforts. With the proper provider training and associated deployment services, clinicians can be up and running within a matter of days.
Supports HIPAA Regulations
Dragon Medical 10 supports patient confidentiality and helps healthcare provider organizations comply with HIPAA regulations.

Dragon Medical is one of many offerings in Nuance’s healthcare portfolio of proven, speech-enabled clinical documentation and communication solutions including the eScription on-demand platform for computer aided medical transcription, the Dictaphone Enterprise Express on-premise platform for integrated transcription workflow and speech recognition, and radiology solutions including PowerScribe®, RadWhere™, RadPort™, RadCube™, and Veriphy™ critical test results management. All of these solutions enable healthcare provider organizations to reduce operating costs, increase reimbursement, and enhance patient care and safety. No matter the specific requirements of a healthcare provider organization, Nuance has solutions to meet its needs. For more information on all of Nuance’s Healthcare solutions please visit: http://www.nuance.com/dictaphone/.

Bob Wise, President, Nuance Healthcare Division — “With healthcare provider organizations under increasing pressure to reduce operating costs, enhance patient care and maximize reimbursement, speech-driven clinical documentation solutions such as Dragon Medical are a proven strategy to transform the medical record creation process, reducing costs, and reallocating physician time away from reporting and toward patient care. As these pressures will only increase across the healthcare industry, we expect the adoption rate of speech-enabled clinical documentation solutions to accelerate as they continue to show demonstrable value in providing more detailed clinical notes at lower costs, while simultaneously improving the clinician experience.”

Availability

Dragon Medical 10 is available in Medical Small Practice, Medical and Medical Enterprise versions (see more information below) through Nuance’s global network of certified reseller partners and professional sales organizations. Within the broader Dragon 10 family of solutions (Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Standard, Preferred and Professional), Dragon Medical is best suited for use in a clinical setting due to its superior accuracy, support for direct dictation into EMRs, and other powerful medical version-only capabilities. For additional information on features, pricing, upgrades, rebate offers and volume licensing programs, please visit www.nuance.com/dragonmedical/offer.asp or call 866 748-9537.

Quotes from Industry Leaders

Wes Rishel, Healthcare Industry Analyst, Gartner
“EMRs cannot make a dent in improving healthcare without dramatically increased physician adoption. Physicians must not only adopt the products, but begin to use them as more than electronic file-drawers and billing systems. Voice input, well-recognized and well integrated with EMR software is critical to closing the gap to meaningful adoption.”

Dr. Loren Leidheiser, Chairman and Director of Emergency Medicine, Mount Carmel St. Ann’s Emergency Department
“I’ve used Dragon Medical speech recognition for about eight years. We use Dragon Medical in our busy emergency department with the Allscripts electronic medical record. Dragon Medical speech recognition has greatly increased the value of our medical records by including detailed narratives that point-and-click templates simply can’t capture; accuracy is near perfect, even in a hectic emergency department environment. Based on my testing and use of Dragon Medical 10, the software seems more intuitive and the recognition has yet again improved from previous versions. Beyond the documentation efficiency gains for our providers, Dragon Medical lets our team tell our patient’s complete story and that raises our quality of care.”

Dr. Betty Rabinowitz, Primary Care Internist, University of Rochester Medical Clinic
“We were most interested in the ROI associated with implementing a speech-enabled technology. We were spending close to $1.2 million on transcription costs in our primary care network and with the implementation of Dragon Medical to complement our Allscripts EMR, our projected cost for transcription has been brought to zero.”

Dr. Jon W. Wahrenberger, Cardiology, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center
“For just over two months I’ve had early access to Dragon Medical 10, which I’ve found to be extremely fine-tuned for the needs of medical users and clinical workflow. It is faster, more accurate and integrates beautifully with our homegrown electronic health record system. I’m excited to share the latest version of Dragon Medical with my colleagues and showcase its ability to improve physician productivity by facilitating the creation of highly detailed and accurate medical records. When compared to the cost of transcription, I’d estimate that the institution [Dartmouth Hitchcock] has saved around $150,000 over the last five years by Dragon Medical working successfully for me alone. The cost of the software purchase can be recouped in a few weeks, not months.”

Glen Tullman, CEO, Allscripts
“With the option to speech enable their EHR system with Dragon Medical, our clients are empowered to create high-quality, real-time patient documentation without solely relying on templates. Speech is raising the bar in healthcare IT, and voice command is an essential component of our comprehensive electronic health record solution.”

Please contact Jennifer Humiston to arrange an interview and/or for additional quotes.

About Nuance Communications

Nuance (NASDAQ: NUAN) 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, the Nuance logo, Dragon, Enterprise Express, PowerScribe, RadWhere, RadPort, RadCube, Veriphy and NaturallySpeaking are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks referenced herein are the property 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. These could involve particular market trends, competition factors and other risks described in the documents submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The actual results, events and services may vary significantly from the forecasts. The reader is warned not to rely on these forward-looking statements without reservation, since these are simply reflections of the current situation.

The Right Dragon Medical Edition for Every Medical Setting
Through its various targeted editions, the Dragon Medical 10 family makes medical speech recognition software available for all healthcare providers including physicians, nurses and physician assistants — in the hospital, the clinic, the private office or even at home — for the real-time creation of electronic patient records. The Dragon Medical versions are the only Dragon NaturallySpeaking solutions developed to support dictation directly into an EMR system and to support HIPAA regulations.

Dragon Medical Small Practice 10 is the entry-level solution designed to meet the needs, workflow requirements and budget constraints of the small (1-5) physician practice market. Physicians can create electronic patient documentation either directly into an EMR or in Microsoft Word, including patient notes, initial assessment, referral letters and consult letters. With Dragon Medical Small Practice 10, physicians can create more detailed and significantly higher quality electronic clinical documentation, in less time and for less cost than manual transcription.

Dragon Medical 10 is targeted at the mid-sized (6-25) physician practice market to create real-time electronic patient records via dictation into any Windows®- or Citrix®-based EMR system. It enhances EMR utilization by allowing clinicians to navigate industrial-strength EMR packages via voice command to review patients’ lab tests or past medical history, while simultaneously allowing them to document care (via dictation) within the electronic medical record. Dragon Medical helps physicians create a more detailed patient document as compared with notes created only using an EMR system’s point-and-click templates. Dragon Medical 10 includes many new features not found in Dragon Medical Small Practice 10, including:

Hidden Mode — Allows clinicians to dictate into the EMR while reviewing lab or radiology test results, eliminating the need to go back and forth to a dictation window.
MyCommands — Shows a clinician their favorite commands in command browser for easy reference.
DragonTemplates — Allows clinicians to create fields with values within frequently-used templates, speeding dictation with fewer voice commands.
Correction-Only Profile — Allows medical transcriptionists to open Dragon Medical-dictated files and make corrections via keyboard. These edits are captured by Dragon Medical and used to further optimize the clinician’s dictation accuracy moving forward.
Custom Macro Encryption — Dragon Medical value-added resellers can now encrypt their macros for distribution, allowing resellers to safely protect the value of their offerings.

Dragon Medical Enterprise 10 is the best solution for healthcare provider organizations that have made an enterprise-wide commitment to achieving electronic health records, and are looking to decrease transcription costs and accelerate physician adoption and productivity, which may have been adversely affected by the complexity of the EMR. It offers large (25+ physicians), multi-site physician practices, hospitals, or integrated deliver networks the most full featured and lowest investment option for enterprise-wide, real-time speech recognition ownership. Dragon Medical Enterprise gives all healthcare providers full access to real-time speech recognition, minimizing the cost of IT administration with features such as remote installs to any machine on a network, physician access via any laptop or PC within the provider organization, and the ability to access and back-up voice files via a central server. Dragon Medical Enterprise also comes with an enterprise-quality annual maintenance and support program that includes all updates, upgrades and technical support, in addition to various site licensing purchase options.