Microsoft expands AI capabilities to shape a healthier future
Rhea-AI Summary
Microsoft Corp. is unveiling several Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare innovations to enhance healthcare experiences and capabilities. Key announcements include:
1. Healthcare AI models in Azure AI Studio, developed with partners like Providence and Paige.ai, enabling rapid deployment of AI solutions for medical imaging and genomics.
2. Healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric, now generally available, offering improved data management and insights.
3. Healthcare agent service in Copilot Studio (public preview) for building AI agents for tasks like appointment scheduling and patient triaging.
4. Collaboration with healthcare organizations to develop an AI solution for nursing documentation using ambient technology.
These innovations aim to streamline workflows, improve data integration, and deliver better outcomes for healthcare professionals and patients while adhering to Microsoft's responsible AI principles.
Positive
- Launch of healthcare AI models in Azure AI Studio for rapid deployment of tailored AI solutions
- General availability of healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric for improved data management
- Public preview of healthcare agent service in Copilot Studio for building AI agents for various healthcare tasks
- Collaboration with healthcare organizations to develop AI solution for nursing documentation
- Adherence to responsible AI principles in developing healthcare solutions
Negative
- None.
News Market Reaction
On the day this news was published, MSFT declined 0.39%, reflecting a mild negative market reaction.
Data tracked by StockTitan Argus on the day of publication.
Through new healthcare AI models in Azure AI Studio, capabilities for healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric, the healthcare agent service in Copilot Studio, and an AI-driven nursing workflow solution, Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare is supporting healthcare organizations on every step of their journey toward shaping a healthier future.
"We are at an inflection point where AI breakthroughs are fundamentally changing the way we work and live," said Joe Petro, corporate vice president, Healthcare and Life Sciences Solutions and Platforms at Microsoft. "Across the broader healthcare and life sciences industry, these advancements are dramatically enhancing patient care and also rekindling the joy of practicing medicine for clinicians. Microsoft's AI-powered solutions are helping lead these efforts by streamlining workflows, improving data integration, and utilizing AI to deliver better outcomes for healthcare professionals, researchers and scientists, payors, providers, medtech developers, and ultimately the patients they all serve."
Expanding the reach of AI beyond text: healthcare AI models in Azure AI Studio
Microsoft is announcing the launch of healthcare AI models, a collection of cutting-edge multimodal medical imaging foundation models available in the Azure AI model catalog. Developed in collaboration with partners like
"The development of foundational AI models in pathology and medical imaging is expected to drive significant advancements in cancer research and diagnostics," said Carlo Bifulco, MD, chief medical officer of Providence Genomics and a co-author of the Prov-GigaPath study. "These models can complement human expertise by providing insights beyond traditional visual interpretation and, as we move toward a more integrated, multimodal approach, will reshape the future of medicine."
Harnessing the power of healthcare data with Microsoft Fabric
Historically, healthcare data has been difficult to access due to its unstructured nature and the limitations of existing data management systems. These challenges have limited organizations' ability to gain a comprehensive view of patient experiences and access valuable insights.
With the general availability of healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric, healthcare organizations can overcome these barriers by reshaping how users access, manage and act on data with a single, unified AI-powered platform. Additionally, healthcare security application templates for Microsoft Purview, an innovative suite of features designed to help govern healthcare data, are available in public preview. We're also launching new capabilities in public preview within healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric including:
- Conversational data integration: Send conversational data, such as patient conversations, from DAX Copilot to the Fabric platform. By sending DAX Copilot audio files, transcripts and draft clinical notes to Fabric, customers and partners can leverage various native tools in Azure and Fabric to analyze this data and/or combine it with other data to generate comprehensive insights.
- Social determinants of health (SDOH) public dataset transformation: Ingest, persist, harmonize and consume SDOH national and international public datasets to enable healthcare organizations to identify risks and health-related social needs to help create equitable healthcare for all patients and communities.
- Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) claim and claim line feed (CCLF) data ingestion: Streamline the ingestion of claims data and harmonize with clinical, imaging and SDOH data to unlock actionable insights on patients and populations.
- Care management analytics: Leverage unified healthcare data and care management analytical templates to enhance patient care by identifying high-risk individuals, optimizing treatment plans and improving care coordination.
- Data discovery and cohorting: Utilize an integrated workflow that allows healthcare organizations to create, manage, analyze and share patient cohorts.
Building a safe and responsible healthcare agent
Healthcare organizations face numerous challenges, including workforce shortages, rising costs and increasing patient care demands. Generative AI offers a potential solution to these challenges by automating administrative tasks, analyzing vast amounts of data for actionable insights and assisting healthcare professionals in decision-making.
To address this, Microsoft is announcing the public preview of healthcare agent service in Copilot Studio to build Copilot agents for appointment scheduling, clinical trial matching, patient triaging and more. Organizations can leverage the healthcare agent service to help create connected patient experiences, improve clinical workflows, and empower healthcare professionals while helping organizations meet industry expectations with Microsoft Copilot Studio. Early adopters, like Cleveland Clinic, which provided feedback to help optimize the solution for a healthcare setting, are already using these innovations to enhance patient experiences and improve operational efficiency.
Enhancing nursing workflows with AI: nursing early outcomes
With the World Health Organization (WHO)1 predicting a shortage of 4.5 million nurses by 2030, the urgency to deliver technology to support the nursing profession is felt more than ever.
Last month at Epic's UGM, we announced the next focus area for our collaboration in Epic Workshop. Today, we're sharing more about how we're actively collaborating with several leading healthcare organizations — including Advocate Health, Baptist Health of
"AI is transforming nursing workflows by streamlining administrative tasks, allowing nurses to focus more on patient care," said Corey Miller, vice president of R&D at Epic. "Together with Microsoft, we're using AI-powered ambient voice technology to populate patient assessments. Nurses using the tool are already sharing positive feedback on how it enhances personalized patient interactions."
"For nurses, the integration of AI-driven solutions into our workflows is a game changer," said Terry McDonnell, DNP, ANCP-BC, senior vice president and chief nurse executive, Duke University Health System, vice dean for Clinical Affairs, Duke University School of Nursing, Duke Health. "It allows us to focus more on patient care rather than the administrative burden of documentation. By automating tedious tasks, Microsoft's ambient AI solution helps alleviate burnout and gives us more time to connect with our patients at the bedside, where we truly make a difference."
Empowering responsible AI practices across healthcare
In line with Microsoft's dedication to responsible AI, these new solutions adhere to the company's AI principles established in 2018 to help guide AI development and use. Microsoft remains committed to developing responsible AI by design, ensuring that these technologies positively impact both the healthcare ecosystem and broader society. In practice this means properly building, testing and monitoring systems to avoid undesirable behaviors, such as harmful content, bias, misuse and other unintended risks. Over the years, we have made significant investments in building out the necessary governance structure, policies, tools and processes to uphold these principles and build and deploy AI safely. At Microsoft, we are committed to sharing our learnings on this journey of upholding our Responsible AI principles with our customers. We use our own best practices and learnings to provide people and organizations with capabilities and tools to build AI applications that share the same high standards we strive for.
For more information on Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare and the new data and AI solutions and their impact, visit https://news.microsoft.com/hlth-2024, or visit Microsoft at booth #4004 at HLTH 2024.
Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) creates platforms and tools powered by AI to deliver innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers. The technology company is committed to making AI available broadly and doing so responsibly, with a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
1 Nursing and midwifery, World Health Organization, 2024 |
This press release includes key announcements on AI-driven healthcare innovations by Microsoft and includes a quote emphasizing AI's transformative role in healthcare.
Epic is a registered trademark of Epic Systems Corp.
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SOURCE Microsoft Corp.
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