This first week of 2012 was already a good one news-wise for IVR. Let’s take a peek at what happened in the headlines in IVR.

This week, Authentidate (News - Alert) nabbed a purchasing agreement with Premier Healthcare Alliance, which will allow members of the Premier healthcare alliance to purchase Authentidate's Electronic House Call (EHC) Kiosk, and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solutions.

Premier healthcare alliance is a national performance improvement organization comprised of more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals and 80,000-plus other healthcare sites.

“Authentidate's remote patient monitoring telehealth solutions offer Premier members leading-edge tools to support the ongoing management and care coordination needs of their patients with chronic diseases,” said Seth Loonan, director of Marketing at Authentidate Holding Corp. “It is our expectation that our telehealth products and services will help Premier members achieve improved outcomes and reduced hospital readmissions for their patients. We are proud to be an authorized Premier supplier and look forward to serving their member organizations. This relationship is an important part of our marketing strategy that will support our long-term growth objectives in the marketplace.”

Mobile VoIP provider Vopium (News - Alert) recently updated its Android (News - Alert) application, which includes a guided tour of Vopium's analytics of user preferences that maximize savings on local and international calls. A wizard gathers call-quality feedback and provides the per-minute rate before each call is placed.

“We know the value of our users in today's highly-competitive mobile calling environment,” said Vopium Chief Technology Officer Asad Parvaiz, in a statement. “The addition of more user-centric product interaction recognizes that value by providing them with even more ways to communicate and save money.”

With mobile VoIP being ultra competitive in pricing compared to 3G, this is good news for mobile VoIP users.

A wizard gathers call-quality feedback and provides the per-minute rate before each call is placed.

Last but not least, this week TMCnet reported on a new text-to-speech software that was created by a 23-year old student from Karnataka State Open University in India.

According to the report, Shreedhar TS, a visually impaired student, came up with the idea after experiences with his own struggles with lessons, specifically with converting lessons from Kannada to English.

“Text to Speech is a software that converts the text on computer into voice. The software has been available for long but visually-impaired students with Kannada as their mother tongue had many limitations as the language was not a part of the software,” said Shreedhar.

That’s it for this week’s roundup of IVR news here on TMCnet. Be sure to check in next week as we wrap up the industry’s headlines in this arena. Until then, be sure to check out TMCnet’s IVR community for all-things IVR.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO East 2012, taking place Jan. 31-Feb. 3 2012, in Miami, FL. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities.

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