Lernout & Hauspie Expands Its Family Of Continuous Speech
Dictation Products For Specialized Medical Markets
07/14/98

New L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine, Mental Health Edition, Allows Physicians to
Quickly Create, Format and Edit Medical Documents by Voice

Burlington, MA – July 14, 1998 – Lernout & Hauspie (NASDAQ: LHSPF; EASDAQ:
LHSP.ED) (L&H), a worldwide market leader in speech and linguistic technologies, products and services, today shipped L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine™, Mental Health Edition. The Mental Health Edition enables medical personnel to quickly dictate, format and edit documents by voice – including mental health terms, phrases and acronyms. The product is the first specialized mental health medical dictation product to combine continuous speech recognition and Natural Language Technology (NLT). NLT is a form of artificial intelligence that enables L&H's Voice Xpress products to intelligently and flexibly interpret users' commands to format a document as intended.

Like the other editions of L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine, Mental Health Edition provides medical document generation, formatting and editing capabilities, while allowing users to access most of the functionality found in Microsoft® Word via intuitive voice commands. L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine, Mental Health Edition includes a mental health domain, or language model plus vocabulary, that covers Psychiatry, Psychology, clinical social work and nursing. It can be used to document psychiatric evaluations, initial assessments and consults, progress notes, discharge summaries, testing reports, letters, and history and physicals. Using L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine, reports can be dictated at speeds of 140 or more words per minute.

"Users in specialized medical markets such as mental health require solutions that are
uniquely tailored to their needs," says Chris Force, vice president of L&H's Healthcare
Solutions Group. "By offering our new Voice Xpress for Medicine, Mental Health Edition, L&H is serving a fast growing market while continuing to focus on its long-term strategy for vertical markets – offer customized speech technology solutions that decrease report turnaround time and positively impact the bottom line."

L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine, Mental Health Edition – Key Features:

L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine, Mental Health Edition helps to eliminate transcription costs and reduce report turnaround time with the following key features:

• Continuous speech recognition – the L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine products allow users to dictate at a rate of up to 140 words per minute.

• Natural Language Technology (NLT) – L&H's Voice Xpress for Medicine line of products use Natural Language Technology to offer a flexible, easy-to-use command language for editing and formatting documents. Users can easily learn and utilize simple voice commands to accomplish functions that would normally require multiple mouse clicks or keyboard strokes.

• Excellent accuracy – With regular use and training after enrollment, users can expect to achieve 95 percent or greater accuracy with the L&H Voice Xpress products. 

• Covers all major mental health diagnoses, including: depression and bipolar disorders, Schizophrenia, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorders, sexual abuse/molestation, attention-deficit disorder, alcohol abuse, use and/or intoxication, drug abuse/use, dementia, delirium.

• Comprehensive, customizable vocabulary – The L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine active vocabulary can include up to 64,000 words.

• Modeless operation – The command and control functionality in the L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine products is seamlessly integrated with the continuous dictation functionality. NLT enables these products to distinguish dictation from commands without switching between separate modes of operation – significantly simplifying the user's computing experience.

• SmartText: Enables users to create macros (a short cut for inserting often-repeated
  dictation) and insert entire paragraphs of text with a single utterance.

• Text to speech capability – L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine products can read
  documents back to users for easy verification when issued a simple command.

• Multiple specialty selection menu – Users can combine several L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine specialty editions on one machine.

• Vocabulary Extender – L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine can incorporate vocabulary and language models from existing documents. Users can add each word that is found with a single button click. L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine will create a speaker independent profile of the word, eliminating unnecessary training time for the user.

L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine, Mental Health Edition – Pricing and Availability

L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine, Mental Health Edition is available now through authorized resellers at an estimated street price of $1,499. For the name and phone number of a nearby reseller, please call 1-800-634-8723 x 5100. Those interested in becoming a reseller can call Channel Sales at 781-203-5200 or 1-800-634-8723, ext. 5200. The L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine product line also includes General Medicine, Primary Care, Emergency Medicine, Radiology, and Pathology editions.

L&H Voice Xpress for Medicine, Mental Health Edition is designed for Microsoft Windows® 95/98 or Windows NT® 4.0. System requirements include a Pentium® II 200 MHz; 48 MB RAM (Win 95/98), 64 MB RAM (Win NT) 130 MB hard disk space; VGA or better monitor; a 16-bit sound board from Creative Labs or other Windows-compatible 16-bit soundcard.

About Lernout & Hauspie

Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products (L&H) is a global leader in advanced speech and language solutions for computers, automobiles, telecommunications, embedded products, consumer goods and the Internet. The company is making the speech user interface (SUI) the keystone of simple, convenient interaction between humans and technology, and it is blending the best of human and machine translation technology, tools and services to instantly break down language barriers around the world. L&H's products and services originate in four basic areas: automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), digital speech and music compression (SMC) and text-to-text (translation). For more information, please visit Lernout & Hauspie on the World Wide Web at www.lhs.com.

Forward-looking statements in this release are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainties, including without limitation risks of intellectual property rights and litigation, risks in technology development and commercialization, risks in product development and market acceptance of and demand for the Company's products, risks of downturns in economic conditions generally, risks associated with competition and competitive pricing pressures, risks associated with foreign sales, risks associated with the sell-through of products in the sales channels, risks associated with customer concentration and other risks detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The statements contained herein speak only as of the date of this release. L&H expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any such statement to reflect any change in L&H's expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based.

All product names and trademarks mentioned herein are trademarks of L&H, Microsoft and their respective owners.


©1998 Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V. All rights reserved.

Please Note!
The following article was produced by Lernout & Hauspie.

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