In a significant announcement, Microsoft is introducing a range of data and artificial intelligence (AI) products to revolutionize the healthcare industry. With the healthcare and life sciences sector generating over 30% of global data, there’s an immense wealth of information at hand. However, much of this data still needs to be tapped due to its dispersion across various systems and formats, leaving around 97% of hospital-generated data unused.
At the HLTH conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft presented new healthcare-specific tools integrated into Fabric, a data and analytics platform introduced in May to address this challenge. This platform can amalgamate data from diverse sources, including electronic health records, medical images, lab systems, medical devices, and claims systems. The primary goal is to standardize this data and make it accessible from a single location, significantly simplifying the time-consuming process of searching through disparate sources.
Microsoft has been conducting trials of Fabric for healthcare with select partners like Northwestern Medicine, Arthur Health, and SingHealth, and it is now available in preview. Doug King, Chief Information Officer at Northwestern Medicine, highlighted the potential benefits of consolidating data, emphasizing its ability to enhance patient care and improve healthcare system efficiency. This is a testament to the growing importance of data in healthcare, from optimizing operating room utilization to streamlining patient admissions and discharges.
King also emphasized the potential for using Microsoft’s technology to manage patient flow and staffing effectively and integrating broader population health data, including information about food deserts, into patient care.
Microsoft is introducing new AI health tools within its Azure AI services. These innovations include:
- Azure AI Health Bot: A generative AI chatbot capable of extracting data from internal and external sources, such as the FDA and NIH. It is a valuable resource for staff and patients, assisting with disease-specific queries, treatment information, and symptom clarification.
- Text Analytics for Health: A tool designed to label and extract essential medical information from various unstructured data sources, available in multiple languages.
- Azure AI Health Insights: Comprising three new models, these tools aim to equip doctors, nurses, and researchers to make more informed decisions. The “patient timeline” model offers a chronological overview of a patient’s medical history. The “clinical report simplification” model simplifies complex medical reports into patient-friendly language. The “radiology insights” model helps identify errors and inconsistencies across radiology reports and offers follow-up recommendations.
These innovations, available in preview starting now, are set to enhance patient experiences and empower healthcare professionals to provide superior care, ultimately transforming the healthcare landscape. Microsoft’s commitment to leveraging AI for the betterment of healthcare holds great promise for the industry’s future.
