Royal Philips Electronics has announced today that it has signed a global licensing agreement with Microsoft (News - Alert) Corporation in an effort to bring industrial grade speech recognition to Microsoft’s Amalga family of enterprise healthcare solutions.

Under this agreement, Microsoft will offer Philips (News - Alert) SpeechMagic to customers using Microsoft Amalga Hospital Information System (amalgam HIS) and Amalga RIS/PACS.

The company’s goal is to help healthcare providers to generate accurate information and turn it into actionable information that is sharable, searchable and contributes to making clinical improvements. 

 

The agreement is considered to be another endorsement of the strength and quality of the award-winning SpeechMagic platform.

“Microsoft and Philips share a common vision: access to timely and accurate information at the point-of-care contributes to making hospitals safer and more productive,” said Marcel Wassink, CEO of Philips Speech Recognition Systems, in a Friday statement.

“Moreover, giving healthcare professionals access to SpeechMagic within Microsoft’s Amalga HIS and Amalga RIS/PACS solutions improves usability and reduces the learning curve for medical professionals,” added Wassink.

Built around an electronic health record (HER), Amalga HIS includes complete patient and bed management in addition to an integrated radiology information system (RIS) and a picture archiving and communication system (PACS).

“Ensuring seamless information sharing across the enterprise requires that input from various departments and sources, such as medical notes, discharge summaries or ward visits, is captured and stored in a standardized format,” said Steve Shihadeh, vice president, Microsoft Health Solutions Group.

“SpeechMagic’s advanced technology and ongoing research in the field of semantic interoperability will allow us to quickly bring advanced information capture to Amalga HIS and Amalga RIS/PACS customers around the globe,” added Shihadeh.

Microsoft Health Solutions Group and Philips Speech Recognition Systems plan to immediately start the process of integrating their technologies.

Speech recognition within the healthcare industry can deliver a wide range of benefits, the most important being its ability to improve patient care. Microsoft recognized the benefit that SpeechMagic could deliver to its customers through Amalga HIS and Amalga RIS/PACS. This combination will enable Royal Philips to build on the Microsoft brand and extend its reach, while Microsoft improves its deliverables to protect its prospects for sustainable growth.

Royal Philips Electronics (News - Alert) of the Netherlands is a diversified health and well-being company that is focused on improving lives through timely innovations. The company integrated technologies and design into people-centric solutions, based on fundamental customer insights and the brand promise of “sense and simplicity.”