Laura Hyde |
Microsoft has introduced the first industry-specific data and artificial intelligence features for Microsoft Fabric to help healthcare providers lower costs, deliver services more efficiently and improve both clinician and patient experiences.
It has combined the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare with the Fabric data and analytics platform to provide users with access, analyse and visualise data from health records, lab results, images, medical devices and more in one place. This gives healthcare providers a multimodal data foundation to build standardised, scalable solutions so they can identify actionable clinical and operational insights quickly, accelerate diagnoses and drive better patient care.
“Today, through the power of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, we are introducing the first industry-specific data solutions in Fabric that unify data and insights through one common architecture and experience,” said Alysa Taylor, corporate vice president for Azure and industry at Microsoft, in a blog post on the Microsoft website. “Now available in preview, the healthcare data solutions in Fabric eliminate the costly, time-consuming process of stitching together a complex set of disconnected, multimodal health data sources, and provides a secure and governed way for organisations to access, analyse and visualise data-driven insights across their organisation.”
Microsoft has also launched new healthcare capabilities in Azure AI Health Insights.
Patient timeline uses generative AI to extract key information from unstructured data, such as medications, diagnosis and procedures, and organises it chronologically to give doctors a more accurate view of a patient’s medical history. Clinical report simplification uses AI to enable clinicians to convert complex medical jargon into simple language so it can be shared with patients. The radiology insights model provides quality checks through feedback on errors and inconsistencies and identifies follow-up recommendations documented by the radiologist.
Meanwhile, the Azure AI Health Bot uses generative AI to pull information from a healthcare organisation’s own data sources, as well as from sources like the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And Text Analytics for health applies machine learning intelligence to extract and label essential medical information from unstructured data sources, such as clinical trials patient cohorts and mass historic data processing.
In addition, Microsoft announced the general availability of Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) Copilot, formerly known as DAX Express, which allows doctors to create draft clinical summaries automatically and securely from the exam room or telephone conversations for immediate review and entry in electronic health records. Atrium Health was the first to deploy Nuance DAX Copilot. It has plans to expand licences across its enterprise of 40 hospitals and more than 1,400 care locations.
“These new industry innovations in data and AI are strengthened through Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, which enables healthcare organisations to accelerate their data and AI journey by augmenting the Microsoft Cloud with industry relevant data solutions, application templates and AI services,” said Taylor. “Our healthcare solutions are built on a foundation of trust and Microsoft’s Responsible AI principles. Through these innovations, we are making it easier for healthcare organisations to create connected experiences at every point of care, provide tools that foster collaboration, empower the healthcare workforce, and unlock the value from clinical and operational data using data standards that are important to the healthcare industry.”