News
Nuance takes over Philips Speech Recognition Systems
1 October 2008
US company Nuance Communications, Inc. has acquired Philips Speech
Recognition Systems (PSRS), a business unit of Royal Philips
Electronics. The deal, worth €66
million (approx £52.3m), provides Nuance with an immediate leadership
position for healthcare speech-recognition solutions in Europe, with
more than 8,000 installations, 100 OEM and channel partners and support
for 25 languages. It also provides Nuance with a team of experienced
sales, marketing, development and support personnel throughout Europe.
Nuance will add Philips' SpeechMagic to its existing portfolio of OEM
solutions, which include Dragon Medical SDK and PowerScribe SDK. Nuance
says it plans to continue to fully support all PSRS customers and
partners worldwide moving forward.
PSRS’ products will become an integral part of Nuance’s healthcare
portfolio of speech-enabled clinical documentation and communication
solutions including Dragon Medical for real-time medical speech
recognition, 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.
“Nuance has been disciplined and focused in our pursuit of the
healthcare opportunity in North America, a strategy that has paid
dividends both in our rapid growth and the broad adoption of our
solutions,” said Paul Ricci, chairman and CEO at Nuance. “PSRS provides
a solid foundation of customers, partners and European
language-solutions as we expand our business in Europe and enable
broader geographical leverage for Nuance’s portfolio of healthcare
products and services.”
Tom Beaudoin, Chief Financial Office at Nuance, said, “We anticipate
that our Healthcare business will now deliver worldwide revenues in
excess of $410 million in fiscal year 2009. Operating margins in our
healthcare business should be up sharply, above the corporate average
for the full fiscal year, as we realize the synergies from fully
integrating PSRS and leverage the operational momentum in our North
American healthcare business.”
“With multiple industry initiatives and significant government
investment toward healthcare information standardisation, Europe offers
a large and growing market for innovative technology that improves
provider productivity and the clinical documentation process,” said
Marcel Wassink, CEO of Philips Speech Recognition Solutions.
“Together with Nuance and our broad partner base, we believe we can
accelerate access to advanced, speech-enabled solutions that enhance the
way medical reports are created and shared, as well as speed the
utilisation of electronic medical records. In addition, we are fully
committed to, and will expand upon, the benefits we deliver to our
customers and partners today.”
PSRS customers include numerous NHS trusts in the UK, several
complete health regions throughout Spain, Norway, Denmark and Italy and
a large number of hospitals in the Benelux countries, Germany, France,
Sweden, Finland, Austria, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Latin
America.
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