The Nuance IVR Sunset Reality
Microsoft's August 2024 announcement stated that healthcare organizations have until June 2026 to migrate away from Nuance IVR products—a remarkably quick turnaround for any healthcare organization. That being said, many organizations have already missed the window for 2025 budgets, forcing them to compress their migration into early 2026.
Having been a staple of the contact center infrastructure for nearly two decades, many healthcare organizations rely on Nuance IVR systems to front end their Cisco or Avaya infrastructure, making Microsoft's suggestion to migrate to their new Dynamics 365 Contact Center or Copilot particularly problematic. These suggested alternatives are not only new to the market but are also absent from both Forrester and Gartner evaluations.
The True Cost of a Hasty Migration
Quick migrations often create unanticipated ripple effects throughout the organization. Typically, most patients who abandon calls from problematic systems never attempt to reach that same hospital again.
During a rushed IVR migration, when system instability and staff unfamiliarity can increase call abandonment rates, this translates directly to lost revenue and delayed or missed care opportunities. While hospitals might typically address such issues by extending call center hours or increasing staffing, these remediation options become severely limited during a compressed migration timeline when staff are already overwhelmed with training and system cutover tasks.
Enter: Amazon Lex
Healthcare organizations seeking to maintain continuous patient care during their IVR transition can leverage Amazon Lex, the technology powering Alexa, which builds on a decade of natural language processing advancement in healthcare settings. Implementation requires replacing the existing contact center system with Amazon Connect to achieve full Amazon Lex integration. Once integrated, this technology enables patients to interact through their preferred communication channels via voice, messaging, or web while maintaining the clinical workflow integrations that healthcare organizations depend on. The system's architecture, designed for enterprise-scale reliability, helps ensure that patient communications remain stable and accessible throughout the migration process.
Amazon Lex offers a cost-effective solution for healthcare organizations to build conversational interfaces using voice and text. With pay-as-you-go pricing and no upfront commitments, organizations only pay for what they use.
Amazon Lex supports two interaction models: request-and-response, where each user input is processed as a separate API call, and streaming conversation, which processes multiple user inputs in a single API call for seamless, proactive interactions. Organizations can also take advantage of a free trial, including up to 10,000 text requests and 5,000 speech requests per month for the first year, making it an accessible and budget-friendly option for improving patient and staff communication.
Through Amazon's Migration Acceleration Program (MAP), stakeholders can work with certified Amazon partners to develop detailed migration plans that enable organizations to maintain their existing infrastructure while methodically transitioning to modern capabilities. This approach allows hospitals to focus on what matters most—maintaining consistent patient access to care. Amazon even has funding programs that may cover some of your migration costs.
Taking Action Now
A successful transition from Nuance IVR requires following a strategic migration pathway that moves from initial assessment through planning, preparation, and implementation phases. Organizations that approach this change with a clear roadmap and experienced guidance can transform what might seem like a daunting deadline into an opportunity for meaningful progress.
The window for thoughtful, strategic migration is narrow, but the opportunity is significant. Healthcare organizations that begin their assessment and planning now, rather than waiting until the deadline looms, will position themselves to not just maintain but enhance their patient engagement capabilities for years to come.
Interested in learning more about how Amazon Connect can help modernize your healthcare contact center? Read our e-book, created in partnership with AWS,
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