With the acquisition of the speech recognition and AI specialist Nuance, Microsoft is penetrating further into the medical market – and securing important products for a niche market in times of pandemics.
By Marcus Schuler, ARD Studio Los Angeles, currently in San Francisco US software giant Microsoft is buying artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing specialist Nuance Communications for just under $ 20 billion. It is the second-largest acquisition in Microsoft’s corporate history after purchasing the career network LinkedIn five years ago for $ 27 billion.
20 years of know-how in speech recognition
Nuance has been programming speech recognition software for over 20 years. It has now become a specialist in many vertical areas. It has built up specialist knowledge in various industries. Perhaps the best-known consumer product here is Dragon Dictate: speech recognition software that can be used on a PC or mobile phone. In recent years, however, the company has increasingly specialized in the medical sector. Nuance offers various software packages that doctors can use, for example, to dictate patient reports. Some of this data goes to the cloud, where the company maintains a library of millions of technical terms. As a result, there are significantly higher recognition rates in the various industrial sectors than speech recognition solutions that are trained on a general vocabulary.
Microsoft secures access to niche market
Nuance also offers speech recognition systems for other industries such as finance and telecommunications. These products were and are particularly popular during the pandemic. Microsoft operates its own speech recognition systems and has connected them to its Azure cloud. However, the results of his training data are by no means as precise as those of the specialist Nuance. With the takeover of the company, Microsoft can now advance into a multi-billion dollar niche market in the field of medicine. In addition, the company already has a customer base of over 10,000 companies. These are health insurance companies, hospitals and medical practices. Nuance has 6,000 employees and is headquartered in Burlington on the US east coast.
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