Welcome to the major leagues of debt. Collateralized debt obligations, almost always referred to as a CDOs, are horrendously complicated deals that often leave anyone without a MBA wondering what was put into these CDOs.

The first thing to understand about bonds, (aka debt) is that bonds are often backed by something else. Think about your home mortgage. If you don't pay your mortgage, the bank can take the house. You end up homeless, and the bank sells the house to pay off the rest of that mortgage. There is something "backing" that mortgage; something lender can fall back on, if you don't pay your bills like a good human being. That's called collateral.

CDOs are one flavor of an entire sector of investing called structured finance, and they are also backed. CDOs, in the simplest concept, are just bonds backed by something else. In most cases, a CDO is backed by a collection of various types of debt. CDOs can be home mortgages, or other types of debt like credit cards, auto loans, and personal loans. Most of these types of debt are usually considered a bit more risky and they don't have the backing that a home loan does. So, if you think it through, you can imagine that CDOs are usually considered a risky investment.

To take a step further, understand that CDOs have multiple flavors within each CDO. These flavors are called tranches. If you've taken French, you might recognize the word, it means "slice" or "portion." Each slice of that CDO you invest in is a little different and carries different amounts of risk.

You could invest in the lowest risk tranche of the CDO, which would provide you lower risk. But, you don't get a good return on that investment. Or, you can be the heroic adventurer of bonds and invest in the lowest-grade tranche of the CDO. You'll make an amazing return, but if the economy even looks at you wrong, you might lose the entire investment.

CDOs aren¿t easy, and are almost always invested in by mutual funds, insurance companies and hedge funds. As an individual investor, you will probably not come across a CDO you can participate in.

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Friday, July 25, 2008

Nuance's Healthcare Products Rank #1 Again in Latest KLAS Speech Recognition Report

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BURLINGTON, Mass., Jul 25, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) ----Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN), a leading supplier of speech solutions, today announced that several offerings from its Healthcare division have been recognized by KLAS in its new Speech Recognition Report. Nuance's commitment to product and customer service leadership has helped position the Company within KLAS's short-list of high ranked vendors and as a leader in speech-driven clinical documentation and communication across the healthcare enterprise . In particular, four solutions were included in the KLAS report, two of which received #1 ranking.

Nuance products were recognized in the front-end speech recognition systems category taking the top two spots:

-- PowerScribe for Radiology: Today, one out of three U.S. radiologists at more than 1,000 facilities nationwide actively use this speech-enabled reporting solution to support and improve radiology workflow. Known for its superior speech recognition performance and workflow capabilities, PowerScribe for Radiology saves the healthcare industry more than $200 million annually in transcription costs by streamlining the creation of highly accurate, comprehensive and readily available clinical documentation. PowerScribe for Radiology seamlessly integrates with nearly 50 leading Radiology Information Systems (RIS) and Picture Archival and Communication Systems (PACS), including integrations to Cerner, FUJIFILM Medical Systems, GE Healthcare, McKesson Information Solutions and Siemens Medical Solutions. In its latest 5.0 version, announced in May 2008, a series of advanced new features including enhanced voice recognition accuracy that reduces word error rate by 35 percent were introduced.

-- RadWhere for Radiology: This application offers radiology workflow management for multi-site RIS, PACS, 3D and teleradiology system environments. RadWhere's Workflow Orchestrator integrates disparate systems to streamline reporting and communication tasks for the radiologist. Through auto-structured reporting, intelligent phrase recognition and an automatic organization tool, radiologists' dictation becomes a highly accurate, structured report for review and edit. In its report, KLAS noted RadWhere for its radiology-specific data mining and administrative capabilities.

-- In addition to PowerScribe for Radiology and RadWhere for Radiology, Nuance's full closed-loop radiology product portfolio includes RadPort for Radiology (decision support for appropriate exam ordering), Veriphy (for critical test result management) and RadCube for Radiology (business intelligence tool for advanced clinical data mining, analysis and classification). Overall, Nuance's integrated solutions support a single, end-to-end, closed-loop management process for radiology. Ordering clinicians and radiologists at teaching hospitals, community-based medical centers and imaging facilities can optimize workflow from the time an exam is ordered, interpreted, documented and throughout to the administration and analysis of patient care.

Of the back-end speech recognition vendors studied for this KLAS Speech Recognition report, Nuance solutions ranked in two of the top three spots:

-- eScription: This On-Demand Computer Aided Medical Transcription solution received an overall score of 91.4 out of 100, making eScription #1 among its peers in back-end speech recognition. eScription has earned this #1 spot four years running, ranking #1 in the category of Transcription and Back-end Speech Recognition since 2004. Additionally, KLAS noted that eScription has "been agile in responding to customer requests and product enhancements, which is especially impressive given its rapid growth over the past four years."

-- Dictaphone Enterprise Express Speech System: "EXSpeech" is proven to speed medical report creation and decrease clinical documentation costs without impacting physician workload or productivity. Currently, sites that are using the latest EXSpeech system have increased compliance with report turnaround time goals by 40 percent, reducing the time it takes for a medical report to be completed from as long as two and half days to in some cases 2 hours or less. Organizations that rely on this speech-assisted, enterprise-wise transcription solution to transform the tedious, time-consuming process of transcribing reports from scratch to the streamlined process of editing speech-recognized draft medical records are seeing significant productivity benefits and cost savings.

"It's one thing for us to tell our clients and prospects that Nuance's healthcare products are unique and that we are committed to excellent customer satisfaction It's another for the healthcare professionals using our products to rate them so highly, as reported by an independent third party," said Robert Wise, President, Nuance's Healthcare division. "Today, nearly half a million physicians are using at least one product in our ever-expanding healthcare portfolio. We're dedicated to serving our customers and growing our offerings of solutions to address evolving needs in clinical documentation and communication."

Nuance has recently expanded its healthcare product portfolio to include front-end and back-end speech recognition systems, as well as outsourced transcription services and clinical communication offerings, through both organic innovation and strategic acquisitions. The most recent acquisition was of eScription, a leading provider of computer aided medical transcription software. To date, the eScription Million Dollar Savings Club includes 23 organizations. These organizations working together with eScription have documented more than $49 million in savings for the healthcare industry.

According to the KLAS report, "the addition of cutting-edge solutions like Commissure RadWhere and eScription has the legacy Dictaphone customers intrigued about future product paths. Nuance continues to show its commitment to this market by acquiring innovative companies in this space."

For this report, KLAS spoke with more than 300 healthcare professionals to investigate both front-end and back-end speech recognition vendors. Beyond features and functionality, differing client satisfaction stemmed from the way the vendor interacts with the client via the sales force, support infrastructure, and executive team. Solutions from Agfa, MedQuist, 3M and Dolbey were included in this report.

About KLAS

KLAS is a research firm specializing in monitoring and reporting the performance of healthcare vendors. KLAS' mission is to improve delivery, by independently measuring vendor performance for the benefit of our healthcare provider partners, consultants, investors, and vendors. Working together with executives from over 4500 hospitals and over 2500 clinics, KLAS delivers timely reports, trends, and statistics, which provide a solid overview of vendor performance in the industry. KLAS measures performance of software, professional services, and medical equipment vendors. For more information, go to www.KLASresearch.com, email marketing@KLASresearch.com, or call 1-800-920-4109 to speak with a KLAS representative.

Nuance Communications, Inc.

Nuance (NASDAQ: NUAN) is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance's proven applications and professional services. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.

Nuance, the Nuance logo, Dictaphone, PowerScribe, eScription, Veriphy, EXSpeech, RadWhere, and Enterprise Express are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE: Nuance Communications, Inc.

Nuance Communications, Inc. Holly Dewar, 781-565-4893 holly.dewar@nuance.com
   or SHIFT Communications Jennifer Humiston, 617-779-1812 jhumiston@shiftcomm.com

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