BayScribe and NLP International enter into Strategic Partnership

BayScribe takes next step in developing end-to-end web-based
Clinical Documentation System with the MedLEE Portal

Edgewater, MD — June 24, 2010 — BayScribe enters into a strategic partnership to integrate and develop applications that leverage the unique capabilities of the MedLEE™ Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology from NLP International.  NLP International has created a universal SaaS portal to give healthcare facilities, MTSOs and Clinical Documentation Systems, like BayScribe’s Cloud-based platform, access to a broad range of applications designed to support automated, low-cost healthcare solutions to improve Quality, EHR Adoption and accelerate Meaningful Use.

BayScribe plans to jointly advance these applications in cooperation with NLP International, healthcare pundits and other MTSOs to offer these valuable solutions to inpatient and outpatient health providers and organizations. The combination of these technologies creates an end-to-end web services solution available from no other company.

The MedLEE™ Natural Language Processing engine codifies standard text documents for data extraction, thereby enabling Discrete Reportable Transcription (DRT). MedLEE™ was developed over the course of 20 years by Columbia University in New York and is a powerful patented NLP engine that automates analytics, reporting and alerting for outflows such as Core Measures, Present on Admission (POA), PQRI, Patient Summary review, coding and billing support, decision support, clinical trials and more. MedLEE™ has been successfully tested by large hospital systems and government agencies, including Columbia University, the New York Presbyterian Hospital, the National Cancer Institute and the U.S. Department of Defense and is considered the gold standard of Natural Language Processing Solutions. 

"We believe that integrating BayScribe with MedLEE creates an end-to-end Clinical Documentation System that is unparalleled in the healthcare industry,” said Ron Neuenberger, President of BayScribe. "We believe that the physician narrative will continue to be the preferred method of documenting patient encounters for some time because it's quick, easy and supports a thorough analysis. It's our obligation to bring this difference-making technology to Healthcare facilities, directly or indirectly, through NLP International's platform-neutral portal. Dictation and Transcription isn’t dying; it’s evolving, and we believe it will be a critical documentation component for many years, and MedLEE enables the data extraction everyone needs,” added Steven Bonney, V.P. of Business Development at BayScribe.

"A significant proportion of the nation's electronic healthcare records exist in the form of unstructured text - such as word or PDF - and the amount of that data is growing dramatically," noted Bernie Keppler, founder and CEO of NLP International. "MedLEE is a perfect match for the healthcare professionals since it enables physicians to adopt EMR’s with no decrease in their volume.   Healthcare organizations will be able to meet the governmental and economic challenges by significantly reduce costs, by creating interoperable data and have the metrics to report on outcomes. Our partnership with BayScribe is representative of how MTSO are enabling healthcare providers and organizations to realize this value,' added Kyle Silvestro, V.P. of Corporate Strategy and Business Development at NLP International. 

About BayScribe

Established in 1999, BayScribe provides Web-based Dictation & Transcription solutions – anywhere access for Authors and Transcriptionists to dictate, review, approve and distribute reports. Every month, tens of thousands of clinicians rely on BayScribe to capture and deliver their reports. 

For more information visit the company website at: www.BayScribe.com.  BayScribe, Inc. | 11 Dark Star Court | Edgewater, MD 21037 T: 888-801-0106 -  info@bayscribe.com .

About NLP International Corporation

NLP International Corporation offers healthcare professional a patented world-class Natural Language Processing Solution: MedLEE™ .  MedLEE has been successfully commercialized from Columbia University over the past 18 months and is now the market leader in Natural Language Processing technology.  With its unique deployment model NLP International makes this world class solution available for through our MedLEE Portal.   The MedLEE Portal is a SaaS offering the has applications ranging from Quality to Semantic Search and Retrieval to Computer Assisted Coding  and Meaningful use. 

MTIA: This Week's Webinar Highlight -- Using Natural Language Processing to Achieve Meaningful Use and Promote HIT Adoption

MTIA: This Week's Webinar Highlight -- Using Natural Language Processing to Achieve Meaningful Use and Promote HIT Adoption


This webinar will review current HIT industry trends affecting MTSOs and the path forward into the age of EHR incentives, "meaningful use," and HIT adoption. This will be followed by an introduction in NLP (Natural Language Processing), a leading-edge technology, and how it is currently being used to enable MTSOs to provide solutions to their clinets to address the "meaningful use" requirement and drive secondary data use.

Natural Language Processing using MedLEE 

STEN-TEL and NLP International Corporation Announce Strategic Partnership

Narrative dictation continues to be the preferred method of data capture for physicians because it’s simple, efficient and supports a thorough and complete record of patient encounters, and with MedLEE™ achieves 80% of meaningful use.

Apr 08, 2010 – Springfield, MA – StenTel has acquired license of NLP International’s MedLEE™ Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology for integration with medical transcription. NLP International has created a universal SaaS portal to give medical transcription service organizations (MTSOs) and transcription technology platforms, like Sten-Tel’s application service provider, access to a broad range of applications designed to support automated, low-cost healthcare solutions for Interoperability, EHR Adoption and Meaningful Use. Sten-Tel plans to jointly advance these applications in cooperation with other MTSOs to widely enable the medical transcription industry to offer these services to inpatient and outpatient health providers and organizations.

The MedLEE™ NLP engine codifies standard text documents for data extraction, thereby enabling Discrete Reportable Transcription (DRT). MedLEE™ was developed over the course of 20 years by Columbia University in New York and is a powerful, patented NLP processing engine that automates analytics, reporting and alerting for outflows such as Core Measures, PQRI, Patient Summary review, coding and billing support, decision support, clinical trials, biological surveillance and more. MedLEE™ has been successfully tested by large hospital systems and government agencies, including the New York Presbyterian Hospital, the National Cancer Institute and the U.S. Department of Defense and is considered the gold standard of such technologies.

“We are thrilled to bring this technology to healthcare through the medical transcription industry, particularly because it is superior to the few competing technologies available,” said George Catuogno, President of StenTel. “Many in the HIT community promote the notion that transcription is no longer valuable or relevant, yet narrative dictation continues to be the preferred method of data capture for physicians because it’s simple, efficient and supports a thorough and complete record of patient encounters. It’s a pleasure to bring this important technology to all MTSOs through NLP International’s platform-neutral portal. Now, with an example such as the Verizon Medical Data Exchange, we can collaboratively demonstrate how transcription-centric technology is, in fact, a valuable and relevant driver of our national HIT initiatives.”

“A significant proportion of the nation’s electronic health care records exist in the form of unstructured, natural language text – in text documents – and the amount of that data is growing dramatically,” noted Bernie Keppler, founder and CEO of NLP International. “MedLEE’s automatic extraction and coding of these records represents a perfect match for the healthcare industry’s need to reduce costs and the government’s support for Meaningful Use of healthcare data. Our partnership with StenTel is representative of how powerful the medical transcription channel is in practically enabling this value for healthcare providers and organizations.”




About NLP International Corporation™

NLP International Corporation offers health care IT professionals a patented world-class product: MedLEE Medical Language Extraction and Encoding. The already widely used and tested natural language processing engine is applicable to a wide range of medical domains and can be readily adopted to specific customer requirements based on its knowledge component design. MedLEE’s™ design offers unique advantages in speed, accuracy and lower cost to our customers and partners. For more information: NLP International Corporation, 21 Bridge Square, Westport, CT 06880 – T: 203-286 6564 – www.nlpapplications.com.

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StenTel is a national medical transcription and health data management organization offering patented transcription platform technology to medical transcription providers, transcription services to hospitals and physician practices, Discrete Reportable Transcription (DRT) to EMR companies, speech recognition solutions, and other solutions for clinical documentation. StenTel is a charter member of the Verizon Medical Data Exchange, a consortium of medical transcription companies, and member of the Medical Transcription Industry Association. For more information, contact George Catuogno, President, StenTel, One Monarch Place, Suite 600, Springfield, MA 01144 – T: 413-746-8100 – www.stentel.com.

MedLEE enables physicians to extract 80% of the data required for Meaningful Use

WASHINGTON – On Dec. 30,  the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a notice of proposed rulemaking that outlines provisions governing the Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive programs, including a proposed definition for the central concept of “meaningful use” of EHR technology.  In order for professionals and hospitals to be eligible to receive payments under the incentive programs, provided through the Recovery Act, they must be able to demonstrate meaningful use of a certified EHR system.

The following list of 23 Stage 1 Meaningful Use criteria for eligible hospitals was taken from the proposed rule: "Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Electronic Health Record Incentive Program."

• I've highlighted in Yellow the criteria that MedLEE currently extracts enabling the automatic identified and validation of the Meaningful Use Criteria and corisponding data points. 
• I've highlighted in Blue the data points that MedLEE will provide to other information systems to enable advance analytics and business intelegance by providing clinical information from unstructured or semi structured documentation.  

[1] Objective: Use of CPOE for orders (any type) directly entered by authorizing provider (for example, MD, DO, RN, PA, NP)
Measure: CPOE is used for at least 10 percent of all orders

[2] Objective: Implement drug-drug, drug-allergy, drug- formulary checks
Measure: The eligible hospital has enabled this functionality

[3] Objective: Maintain an up-to-date problem list of current and active diagnoses based on ICD-9-CM or SNOMED CT
Measure: At least 80 percent of all unique patients admitted to the eligible hospital have at least one entry or an indication of none recorded as structured data.

[4] Hospital Objective: Maintain active medication list.
Measure: At least 80 percent of all unique patients admitted by the eligible hospital have at least one entry (or an indication of “none” if the patient is not currently prescribed any medication) recorded as structured data.

[5] Objective: Maintain active medication allergy list.
Measure: At least 80 percent of all unique patients admitted to the eligible hospital have at least one entry (or an indication of “none” if the patient has no medication allergies) recorded as structured data.

[6] Objective: Record demographics.
Measure: At least 80 percent of all unique patients admitted to the eligible hospital have demographics recorded as structured data

[7] Objective: Record and chart changes in vital signs.
Measure: For at least 80 percent of all unique patients age 2 and over admitted to the eligible hospital, record blood pressure and BMI; additionally, plot growth chart for children age 2 to 20.

[8] Objective: Record smoking status for patients 13 years old or older
Measure: At least 80 percent of all unique patients 13 years old or older admitted to the eligible hospital have “smoking status” recorded

[9] Objective: Incorporate clinical lab-test results into EHR as structured data.
Measure: At least 50 percent of all clinical lab tests results ordered by an authorized provider of the eligible hospital during the EHR reporting period whose results are in either in a positive/negative or numerical format are incorporated in certified EHR technology as structured data.

[10] Objective: Generate lists of patients by specific conditions to use for quality improvement, reduction of disparities, research, and outreach
Measure: Generate at least one report listing patients of the eligible hospital with a specific condition.

[11] Objective: Report hospital quality measures to CMS or the States.
Measure: For 2011, an eligible hospital would provide the aggregate numerator and denominator through attestation as discussed in section II.A.3 of this proposed rule. For 2012, an eligible hospital would electronically submit the measures are discussed in section II.A.3. of this proposed rule.

[12] Objective: Implement five clinical decision support rules relevant to specialty or high clinical priority, including for diagnostic test ordering, along with the ability to track compliance with those rules
Measure: Implement five clinical decision support rules relevant to the clinical quality metrics the Eligible Hospital is responsible for as described further in section II.A.3.

[13] Objective: Check insurance eligibility electronically from public and private payers
Measure: Insurance eligibility checked electronically for at least 80 percent of all unique patients admitted to an eligible hospital

[14] Objective: Submit claims electronically to public and private payers.
Measure: At least 80 percent of all claims filed electronically by the EP or the eligible hospital.

[15] Objective: Provide patients with an electronic copy of their health information (including diagnostic test results, problem list, medication lists, allergies, discharge summary, and procedures), upon request.
Measure: At least 80 percent of all patients who request an electronic copy of their health information are provided it within 48 hours.

[16] Objective: Provide patients with an electronic copy of their discharge instructions and procedures at time of discharge, upon request.
Measure: At least 80 percent of all patients who are discharged from an eligible hospital and who request an electronic copy of their discharge instructions and procedures are provided it.

[17] Eligible Hospital Objective: Capability to exchange key clinical information (for example, discharge summary, procedures, problem list, medication list, allergies, diagnostic test results), among providers of care and patient authorized entities electronically.
Measure: Performed at least one test of certified EHR technology's capacity to electronically exchange key clinical information.

[18] Objective: Perform medication reconciliation at relevant encounters and each transition of care.
Measure: Perform medication reconciliation for at least 80 percent of relevant encounters and transitions of care.

[19] Objective: Provide summary care record for each transition of care and referral.
Measure: Provide summary of care record for at least 80 percent of transitions of care and referrals.

[20] Objective: Capability to submit electronic data to immunization registries and actual submission where required and accepted.
Measure: Performed at least one test of certified EHR technology's capacity to submit electronic data to immunization registries.

[21] Objective: Capability to provide electronic submission of reportable lab results to public health agencies and actual submission where it can be received.
Measure: Performed at least one test of certified EHR technology capacity to provide electronic submission of reportable lab results to public health agencies (unless none of the public health agencies to which eligible hospital submits such information have the capacity to receive the information electronically).


[22] Objective: Capability to provide electronic syndromic surveillance data to public health agencies and actual transmission according to applicable law and practice.
Measure: Performed at least one test of certified EHR technology's capacity to provide electronic syndromic surveillance data to public health agencies (unless none of the public health agencies to which an eligible hospital submits such information have the capacity to receive the information electronically).

[23] Objective: Protect electronic health information maintained using certified EHR technology through the implementation of appropriate technical capabilities.
Measure: Conduct or review a security risk analysis in accordance with the requirements under 45 CFR 164.308 (a)(1) and implement security updates as necessary.

Climbing Everest on the back of Superman

Searching for information and the extraction of concepts from full text in natural language is rapidly becoming ever more important in the healthcare and the pharmaceutical industries. Rapid access to information in a pre-configured format is the key concept. The amount of data is too vast for manual access to particular information. With the US government increasing the reporting requirements daily, healthcare providers need an accurate, efficient and affordable solution to identify, validate, capture, and share clinical information, they need MedLEE™!

MedLEE™ Natural Language Processing can semantically search, index and extract all of the relevant information from medical documents, which provides quick access to a very large amount of data in a computer readable format. The MedLEE™ NLP output can be used for semantic search and retrieval, document classification, information extraction to populate EMR's, data mining, code extraction, core measures, PQRI, Infection Surveillance, Patient summary data, clinical trial (inclusion/exclusion screening), drug discovery and much more.

The MedLEE™ NLP engine utilizes a deep syntactical parsing technology that gives the engine superior ability to assess negation, uncertainty and verb tenses in narratives. The underlying MedLEE™ engine is used for disambiguating terms, and mapping them into a broader conceptual framework, where they can be directly mapped to standard terminologies or proprietary systems. Natural language processing allows the transformation of unstructured data into formally represented data.

MedLEE™ provides a unique solution for knowledge management that enables healthcare providers to meet the meaningful data use standards today.