Elly Yates-Roberts |
In a new post on LinkedIn, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has outlined how the company is working with organisations in public sector, healthcare, education and security to address some of the biggest challenges that have arisen as a result of Covid-19.
“We are steadfast in our mission to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more,” he wrote. “No one company is going to solve a challenge like this alone and it’s going to take the private and public sectors working together to turn the tide on Covid-19.
“Our unique role as a platform and tools provider allows us to connect the dots, bring together an ecosystem of partners and enable organisations of all sizes to build the digital capability required to address these challenges.
I’m proud of how we are adopting a first responder mindset across the company, working with so many customers on the front lines, including governments, health providers, schools, food suppliers and other commercial customers critical to the continuity and stability of services in every country.”
In healthcare, Microsoft technology is being used to facilitate innovative medical procedures. For example, according to the LinkedIn post, St. Luke’s University Health Network in Pennsylvania is using Teams to video chat with patients and Seattle hospitals are using Power Apps and Power BI to manage their bed count and inventory of critical supplies.
Microsoft is working with organisations such as Adaptive Biotechnologies and DNAstack to better understand the virus and share findings with researchers worldwide. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also released a bot to assess symptoms and risk factors in patients from the safety of their home.
Educators are also using Microsoft solutions to adapt to the global situation. “A professor at University of Bologna in Italy shared how the school moved 90 per cent of courses for its 80,000 students online to Teams within three days,” Nadella wrote. “And an elementary school in Japan hosted its graduation on Minecraft, building its own virtual assembly hall and seating to maintain the sense of community and belonging so important in times like this.”
Nadella also shared that the company has been using its artificial and human intelligence capabilities to stop security attacks designed to take advantage of the impact of the virus. “As part of a recent spear-phishing campaign, attackers created emails to look like legitimate supply-chain reports related to Covid-19. Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection identified and blocked the attack in transit and shared signals with the Microsoft Defender service to protect all our customers.”
Beyond industry-specific solutions, Microsoft is working to keep citizens informed. It recently released a Communication Crisis App to help customers share information and collaborate effectively, the firm’s search engine Bing now features a Covid-19 tracker to show updated statistics and it is working with Facebook, Twitter and other firms to combat misinformation about the virus.
“One truth that brings me comfort is just as this virus has no borders, its cure will have no borders,” Nadella wrote. “We are all in this together as a global community.”