Microsoft has unveiled fresh tools in Microsoft Fabric and Azure AI for healthcare institutions. These new products can pull in data from a myriad of sources, such as electronic health records, images, lab systems, medical devices and claims systems, and organize it so that it is all accessible from a single location. Microsoft commented that the new tools can save time by eliminating the need to search these sources separately, thus allowing medical personnel to focus on providing care.
On Tuesday, at the HLTH conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft unveiled new data and artificial intelligence products designed to assist health-care organizations in extracting and learning from the massive amounts of data collected by doctors and hospitals. Recent research from Deloitte suggests that the health care and life sciences industry produces more than 30% of the world's data. Unfortunately, the sheer volume currently poses difficulty in capitalization due to storage in disparate systems and forms. Approximately 97% of hospital data remains unused, an issue Microsoft sought to counter through their Fabric platform, released in May. The new health-care-specific tools integrate data from multiple sources, such as electronic health records, images, laboratory systems, medical devices, and claims systems, which streamlines the arduous process of searching through all the different sources.
Microsoft has begun trialing Fabric for health care with Northwestern Medicine, Arthur Health and SingHealth, and it has become available to preview as of Tuesday. Doug King, CIO at Northwestern Medicine, commented that the organization is in the process of moving its data into the Fabric, but they already anticipate how this may bestow valuable advantages. He stated that collecting multiple sets of data may help health systems improve care and accommodate more patients. King explained this in an interview with CNBC, mentioning that it will give a better insight into what is happening in the OR, patient in-take and out-take, and how to make the process efficiently fast. He believes that the use of Microsoft’s technology, especially if executed correctly, can be a game-changer. The organization is currently exploring ways to manage patient flow and staffing, as well as how to include broader population health data, such as food deserts, into care. King summed it up by saying that the current technology, such as Microsoft Fabric, Azure, and generative AI, can change the way people live and take care of patients, potentially providing a solution to some of the greatest health care issues.
Microsoft debuted new tools for health-care organizations today as part of its Azure AI services. Among them is the Azure AI Health Bot, a generative chatbot that can pull info from both a health organization's own data and external sources such as the FDA and NIH. Linishya Vaz, Principal Product Manager at Microsoft Health and Life Sciences, stated it can help staff ask questions such as how to treat a specific illness or what are the protocols. Patients can also use it to get clarification about symptoms and medical terms within their patient portal. Vaz added that safeguards have been put in place to ensure the information is credible.
Microsoft also released Text Analytics for health, which is a tool to label and extract important medical information from unstructured data. It will be available in seven languages: Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Hebrew, and English.
Finally, Azure AI Health Insights has three models: patient timeline, clinical report simplification, and radiology insights. The patient timeline gives clinicians a chronological look at a patient's medical history by using generative AI to consolidate data. The second, clinical report simplification, enables clinicians to simplify complex reports into language that patients may understand better. The last, radiology insights, helps clinicians and radiologists identify errors and inconsistencies across reports and recommend follow-ups.
These new solutions in Azure AI are available to preview today and are meant to improve both patient experiences and the care delivered by clinicians.
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