Case Study: Nuance Communications achieves scalable, secure cloud delivery of Dragon Medical One—boosting physician productivity and cutting transcription costs with Microsoft Azure

Cloud-based speech recognition software helps physicians deliver best possible care

Nuance Communications, a leader in voice-recognition and clinical documentation solutions whose healthcare division accounts for half its revenue, needed a secure, scalable way to deliver responsive speech recognition across distributed care settings and devices as its cloud product, Dragon Medical One, rapidly grew. The company sought a world‑class cloud infrastructure that met HIPAA requirements, improved availability, and supported thin‑client and mobile workflows while enabling faster updates and global expansion.

Nuance migrated Dragon Medical One to Microsoft Azure using a mix of IaaS and PaaS (including Azure SQL Database, Traffic Manager, Virtual Machines, Load Balancer, Virtual Network, and Security Center) in an active‑active datacenter configuration. The move allowed a 10,000‑user migration in four hours, doubled the number of organizations using the service in a year, and delivered measurable customer gains — 97% clinician recommendation, 94% of physicians at Nebraska Medicine reporting improved performance, and a 65% reduction in transcription costs at Virginia Spine Institute — along with 99.95% availability, rapid global rollout capability, and stronger HIPAA-aligned security.

Nuance

Jonathon Dreyer

Senior Director of Solutions Marketing