ROCHESTER, Minn., and REDMOND, Wash. —Sept. 28, 2023 — Mayo Clinic, a world leader in healthcare known for its commitment to innovation, is among the first healthcare organizations to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot. This new generative AI service combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with organizational data from Microsoft 365 to enable new levels of productivity in the enterprise.
“Microsoft 365 Copilot has the ability to transform work across virtually every industry so people can focus on the most important work and help move their organizations forward,” said Colette Stallbaumer, general manager, Microsoft 365. “We’re excited to be helping customers like Mayo Clinic achieve their goals.”
Generative AI has the potential to support Mayo Clinic’s vision to transform healthcare. For example, generative AI can help doctors automate form-filling tasks. Administrative demands continue to burden healthcare providers, taking up valuable time that could be used to provide more focused care to patients. Microsoft 365 Copilot has the potential to give healthcare providers valuable time back by automating tasks.
Mayo Clinic is one of the first to start working with Copilot tools to enable staff experience across apps like Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel and more. Microsoft 365 Copilot combines the power of LLMs with data in the Microsoft 365 apps, including calendars, emails, chats, documents and meeting transcripts, to turn words into a powerful productivity tool.
“Privacy, ethics and safety are at the forefront of Mayo Clinic’s work with generative AI and large language models,” said Cris Ross, chief information officer at Mayo Clinic. “Using AI-powered tech will enhance Mayo Clinic’s ability to lead the transformation of healthcare while focusing on what matters most — providing the best possible care to our patients.”
As a leader in healthcare, Mayo Clinic is always looking for new ways to improve patient care. By using generative AI and LLMs, Mayo Clinic will be able to offer its teams new timesaving tools to help them succeed.
About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to innovation in clinical practice, education and research, and providing compassion, expertise and answers to everyone who needs healing. Visit the Mayo Clinic News Network for additional Mayo Clinic news.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
For more information, press only:
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, [email protected]
Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at https://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts.
Multiyear alliance creates foundation for innovation and deeper insights with data
REDMOND, Wash., and ST. LOUIS — Sept. 27, 2023— Microsoft Corp. and Mercy are forging a long-term collaboration using generative AI and other digital technologies to give physicians, advance practice providers and nurses more time to care for patients and improve the patient experience. This work represents what’s next in healthcare for applying advanced digital technologies to the delivery of care to consumers.
“With the latest advances in generative AI, this moment marks a true phase change where emerging capabilities can help health care organizations address some of their most pressing challenges, create needed efficiency and transform care,” said Peter Lee, corporate vice president of research and incubations at Microsoft. “Mercy has a reputation for ongoing innovation and — through our years working together — has been a leader in the industry in creating an intelligent data platform on which to launch this kind of transformation. This is just the beginning, and it’s inspiring to see Mercy’s leadership adopting these tools to empower physicians, providers, nurses and all clinicians to improve patient care.”
Mercy plans to use Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to improve care in several immediate new ways:
Patients will have the information to better understand their lab results and engage in more informed discussions about their health with their provider through the help of generative AI-assisted communication. Patients will be empowered to get answers in simple, conversational language.
Mercy will apply generative AI when taking patient calls for actions like scheduling appointments. Beyond the initial call, the AI solution will provide recommendations for additional follow-up actions to make sure all the patient’s needs are met during a single interaction, limiting the need for follow-up calls.
A chatbot for Mercy co-workers will help quickly find important information about Mercy policies and procedures, and locate HR-related answers such as information on benefits or leave requirements. By helping nurses and co-workers find the information they need more quickly, they can spend more time on patient care.
“Because of all the investments we have made together with Microsoft in the past few years, including the use of Microsoft’s secure cloud, we are better positioned to perform real-time clinical decision-making that ultimately improves patient care,” said Joe Kelly, Mercy’s executive vice president of transformation and business development officer. “With Microsoft, we are exploring more than four dozen uses of AI and will launch multiple new AI use cases by the middle of next year to transform care and experiences for patients and co-workers. This is predictive, proactive and personalized care at its best.”
As Mercy’s preferred platform for ongoing innovation, the Microsoft Cloud provides the health system with a trusted and comprehensive platform to improve efficiency, connect and govern data, impact patient and co-worker experience, reach new communities, and build a foundation for ongoing innovation. By securely centralizing and organizing data in an AI-powered intelligent data platform built on Azure, Mercy is uniquely positioned to deliver on evolving clinician and patient expectations more quickly. For example, Mercy can tap into secure data insights to reduce many unnecessary patient days in the hospital by giving care teams smart dashboards and better visibility into the factors that impact how soon patients can return home. Additionally, Microsoft’s modern work solutions will help Mercy co-workers improve productivity and communication so they can spend more time improving patient care and experience.
“Mercy and Microsoft are creating a new path for health systems in which we are working shoulder to shoulder to combine our 200-year heritage in health care and Microsoft’s extensive expertise in cloud and AI to enhance care for the patients we serve and improve the working experience for our physicians, advanced providers, nurses and all co-workers,” said Steve Mackin, Mercy’s president and CEO. “By using technology in new and secure ways, we innovate better health care for all.”
The organizations recently brought together Mercy’s engineering teams and senior leaders with Microsoft leaders, engineers and industry experts for a hackathon to co-imagine and begin to co-innovate around the generative AI use cases in development. Additionally, Microsoft and Mercy are working together to showcase Mercy’s solutions in the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) in Chicago in 2024. The showcase will highlight transformational clinical experiences and demonstrate what the future of health care could look like using Microsoft technology.
About Mercy
Mercy, one of the 20 largest U.S. health systems and named the top large system in the U.S. for excellent patient experience by NRC Health, serves millions annually with nationally recognized quality care and one of the nation’s largest Accountable Care Organizations. Mercy is a highly integrated, multi-state health care system including more than 40 acute care, managed and specialty (heart, children’s, orthopedic and rehab) hospitals, convenient and urgent care locations, imaging centers and pharmacies. Mercy has 900 physician practices and outpatient facilities, more than 4,000 physicians and advanced practitioners and more than 45,000 co-workers serving patients and families across Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Mercy also has clinics, outpatient services and outreach ministries in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
About Microsoft
Microsoft(Nasdaq “MSFT” @Microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
For more information, press only:
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, [email protected]
Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at https://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts.
New Azure Large Instances allows healthcare providers to manage large EHR database loads using public cloud-hosted infrastructure
REDMOND, Wash. — Aug. 10, 2023 — Microsoft Corp. on Thursday announced that Epic clients, starting with Mount Sinai Health System (Mount Sinai), one of New York City’s largest academic medical systems, can use Microsoft Azure Large Instances, a solution designed to achieve the scale needed to run the large Epic electronic health record (EHR) database — up to 50 million database accesses per second. Azure Large Instances leverages dedicated resources, which allows Mount Sinai and other Epic clients to scale beyond the previous limits of shared public cloud infrastructure solutions.
Through close collaboration with Accenture, Mount Sinai continues to migrate many of its workloads to Azure and now has the largest production instance of Epic running on Azure in the world. “We are very excited about this move as it further enables digital transformation, accelerates artificial intelligence (AI) and innovation, provides scalability and flexibility, and reduces upfront infrastructure costs, ultimately leading to improved care and discovery as well as streamlined operations,” said Kristin Myers, executive vice president, chief digital and information officer, and dean for digital and information technology at Mount Sinai.
At the core of healthcare provider organizations and care delivery is the EHR, a real-time, patient-centered record that contains the medical and treatment history of a patient, giving providers a broad view of a patient’s care. As healthcare organizations manage an increasingly complex care landscape and challenging economic conditions, there is a growing desire to consolidate and exit on-premises data centers and build for further innovation. “Going through this digital transformation requires partners who understand our health system’s mission and the criticality of patient care,” said Joseph Gimigliano, chief technology officer at Mount Sinai. Microsoft’s long-standing collaboration with Epic includes enabling the migration of Epic EHR environments to Azure through ongoing joint testing and engineering.
“Our mission is to empower the healthcare industry to achieve more, helping to deliver the best experiences for providers and patients,” said Tom McGuinness, corporate vice president, global healthcare & life sciences at Microsoft. “Through our collaboration with Epic, we are delivering innovation for customers on Azure that will help healthcare organizations reduce the complexity of infrastructure management and control costs with a secure, scalable and agile public cloud solution. These benefits are key to helping healthcare organizations succeed, particularly as they navigate through today’s economic landscape.”
Moving to a cloud-first computing model is essential for many healthcare providers looking to implement a digital transformation strategy to enable better care at lower costs. Healthcare organizations are faced with the increased costs of hardware, software, installation, maintenance and management of healthcare IT landscapes on-premises as well as with the difficulty of finding and retaining staff to build and manage highly available, secure and compliant environments. Azure offers opportunities for agility, cost management and risk reductions by offloading the data center and hardware management to Microsoft. With faster time to value from current investments in the cloud and opportunities to innovate quickly, organizations can rethink how they utilize data and AI and take a digital health platform approach.
For more information on Epic on Azure, visit Epic on Azure.
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
For more information, press only:
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications, (425) 638-7777,
Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at https://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts.
REDMOND, Wash., and VERONA, Wis. — April 17, 2023— Microsoft Corp. and Epic on Monday announced they are expanding their long-standing strategic collaboration to develop and integrate generative AI into healthcare by combining the scale and power of Azure OpenAI Service1 with Epic’s industry-leading electronic health record (EHR) software. The collaboration expands the long-standing partnership, which includes enabling organizations to run Epic environments on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.
This co-innovation is focused on delivering a comprehensive array of generative AI-powered solutions integrated with Epic’s EHR to increase productivity, enhance patient care and improve financial integrity of health systems globally. One of the initial solutions is already underway, with UC San Diego Health, UW Health in Madison, Wisconsin, and Stanford Health Care among the first organizations starting to deploy enhancements to automatically draft message responses.
“A good use of technology simplifies things related to workforce and workflow,” said Chero Goswami, chief information officer at UW Health. “Integrating generative AI into some of our daily workflows will increase productivity for many of our providers, allowing them to focus on the clinical duties that truly require their attention.”
Another solution will bring natural language queries and interactive data analysis to SlicerDicer, Epic’s self-service reporting tool, helping clinical leaders explore data in a conversational and intuitive way.
“Our exploration of OpenAI’s GPT-4 has shown the potential to increase the power and accessibility of self-service reporting through SlicerDicer, making it easier for healthcare organizations to identify operational improvements, including ways to reduce costs and to find answers to questions locally and in a broader context,” said Seth Hain, senior vice president of research and development at Epic.
Leading industry experts have highlighted the urgent need for health systems and hospitals to address intense pressures on costs and margins. Approximately half of U.S. hospitals finished 2022 with negative margins as widespread workforce shortages and increased labor expenses, as well as supply disruptions and inflationary effects, caused expenses to meaningfully outpace revenue increases.2 Industry participants recognize that achieving long-term financial sustainability through increased productivity and technological efficiency is a mission-critical strategic priority.3
“The urgent and critical challenges facing healthcare systems and their providers demand a comprehensive approach combining Azure OpenAI Service with Epic’s industry-leading technology,” said Eric Boyd, corporate vice president, AI Platform, Microsoft. “Our expanded partnership builds on a long history of collaboration between Microsoft, Nuance and Epic, including our work to help healthcare organizations migrate their Epic environments to Azure. Together we can help providers deliver significant clinical and business outcomes leveraging the power of the Microsoft Cloud and Epic.”
When creating technologies that can change the world, Microsoft believes organizations need to ensure that the technology is used responsibly. Microsoft is committed to creating responsible AI by design that is guided by a core set of principles: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. Microsoft is putting those principles into practice across the company to develop and deploy AI that will have a positive impact on society, taking a cross-company approach through cutting-edge research, best-of-breed engineering systems, and excellence in policy and governance.
Visit the Microsoft, Nuance and Epic booths at the 2023 HIMSS Global Health Conference in Chicago to learn more about new and enhanced AI-powered solutions and areas of shared innovation.
About Epic
Epic develops software to help people get well, help people stay well, and help future generations be healthier. Visit www.epic.com/about.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
1 Azure and Azure OpenAI Service, including any of its component technologies, is intended for general-purpose use and is not intended or made available: (1) as a medical device; (2) for the diagnosis of disease or other conditions, or in the cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of a disease; or (3) as a substitute for the professional clinical advice, opinion, or judgment of a treating healthcare professional. Azure and Azure OpenAI Service has not been evaluated by the U.S. FDA or similar regulatory agency as a medical device, and users of Azure and Azure OpenAI Service are responsible for ensuring the regulatory compliance of their use or any solution they build using Azure and Azure OpenAI
Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at https://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts.
Medical imaging has long been at the forefront of the adoption of digital tools in healthcare. Over the past three decades, radiology has evolved from an analog film-based workflow to leading the development and adoption of the most sophisticated health IT tools and workflows in the entire healthcare system.
The success of this evolution depended on the foresight of medical imaging leadership to make capital investments in powerful computing networks, which led to an unprecedented ability to share and ingest large imaging files across the healthcare enterprise to serve a growing digital-first clinical service. But while leading the digital transformation has led to tremendous advantages, newer challenges have emerged including ever-increasing imaging volumes with many different modalities, combinations, and sources of data, all of which challenge traditional health IT resources.
If history is any guide, we believe medical imaging will once again lead to another modern transformation, one that allows health systems to unlock the security, scalability, and elasticity of the cloud. As in other industries, migrating and integrating medical imaging workloads to the cloud, alongside clinical and other data, will achieve new levels of operational efficiency, break down data silos for advanced workflows and intelligent analytics, and finally, provide on-demand modern infrastructure to deliver AI and machine learning workloads that enable disease detection and improved precision care.1
This year at RSNA 2022, Microsoft + Nuance are excited to engage in conversations around how cloud technology, AI, and machine learning will change the future of the medical imaging industry.
Here are a few of the key highlights of where you’ll find Microsoft + Nuance at RSNA 2022:
1. Join us on the symposium stage
Join us on Monday, November 28, 2022, from 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM CT, in the South Building, Level 1, Room S101AB for a discussion on “From Discovery to Delivery: Integrating data with AI to bring precision therapies into practice” with Fredrick Gustavsson, Chief Technology Officer and VP of Product, Sectra; Dr. Matt Lungren, Chief Medical Information Officer, Nuance; Steven Borg, Senior Director, Health Data and AI, Microsoft Health and Life Sciences; and John Barto, Chief Digital Transformation Officer, Microsoft Health and Life Sciences. Hear their thoughts on how we are using AI to discover insights in patient specific data early in the care continuum and deliver those insights directly into the radiologist workflow for targeted diagnosis. Learn more by registering for the symposium.
2. Build with us in hands-on workshops
We’re excited to host a series of hands-on workshops with subject matter experts throughout RSNA 2022, covering topics like advancing responsible AI, empowering analytics, and taking the first step to migrate to the cloud.
A journey of a thousand miles: Taking the first step to migrate to the cloud (without interrupting your current flow)
In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn that moving your data to the cloud doesn’t have to be daunting. You can start with a few simple additions to your current infrastructure and start seamlessly moving your data to the cloud. Register to join one of our three sessions—on November 27, November 28, or November 29.
Advancing responsible AI: Model building and deployment
Participants will gain behind-the-scenes access to the synergy between Microsoft and Nuance AI solutions. We will take attendees on an end-to-end journey from dataset curation, AI model building, checking the model for fairness and bias, model deployment, and post-deployment model monitoring. Register to join one of our four sessions—on November 27, November 28, November 29, or November 30.
Empower your analytics: Harnessing the power of AI to unlock meaning and deliver insights
In this workshop, you will discover how Nuance mPower Clinical Analytics and Microsoft Azure capabilities make it easy to extract, analyze, and report on your data, enabling improved outcomes, quality, and performance. Register to join one of our two sessions—on November 28 or November 29.
3. Join us in the Imaging AI in Practice booth
Learn more about AI in practice at the Imaging AI in Practice booth every afternoon from 1:00 to 5:00 PM on the half hour for a demo walkthrough. The Imaging AI in Practice (IAIP) demonstration is an interoperability demonstration to showcase new technologies and communication standards needed to integrate AI into the diagnostic radiology workflow. The demonstration follows a fictional patient through a real-world clinical scenario involving both emergent and long-term care.
4. Meet us at the Microsoft+ Nuance booth
Join us in booth #3300, where we will highlight Microsoft + Nuance products and synergy. Come engage with us—we would love to share insights, discuss best practices, and answer all your questions. Learn more by requesting a meeting or demo in the booth.
Next Steps
Join us at RSNA 2022 in Chicago, Illinois from November 27 to December 1, 2022. We look forward to sharing more about how the Microsoft + Nuance vision comes to life to reimagine the medical imaging world and improve patient care. For more information and to register for workshops and sessions, please visit our registration page.
Microsoft + Nuance at RSNA 2022
RSNA 2022 brings together some of the most innovative minds in radiology to discuss reimagining patient care.
The past few years have been a period of dramatic change, with disruptions to our society, public health, frontline healthcare worker shortage, technology, and the way we work. As organizations adapt to new challenges, they are turning to their technology providers to help them succeed.
At this year’s HLTH 2022 conference Microsoft + Nuance will join other industry innovators and thought leaders to consider how organizations are using digital technology to turn the corner in unprecedented times. We’re excited to share our latest release wave for Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, which helps support organizations navigating this changing environment. The solution showcases new tools to free up critical resources and support consumer-centric operating models that ease the burden on providers and help facilitate proactive healthcare.
Here are a few of the key highlights of where you’ll find Microsoft at HLTH 2022:
1. Join us in the arena stage
Join us on Tuesday, November 15, 2022, from 4:20 PM to 5:00 PM PST, for this 40-minute panel conversation with Hadas Bitran, Partner Group Manager, Health AI, Microsoft, panelist alongside Google and Salesforce, to hear her definition of disruption and further, if healthcare is even disrupt-able.
2. Meet with Microsoft
Connect with Microsoft at HLTH 2022. Listen to us on the Tech Talk stage at 10:30 AM and 10:45 AM PST on November 16, 2022. We will also be at Meeting Cube MC-467 (US Health & Life Science) and Meeting Cube MC-966 (Nuance) and would love to schedule time to strategize, share insights and best practices, and answer all your questions.
3. Join us in the newsroom stage
For the first time at HLTH, Nuance will present how the Precision Imaging Network is driving better patient outcomes and business performance across the entire healthcare ecosystem leveraging an open enterprise AI platform. Join us on Monday, November 14, 2022, from 10:10 AM to 10:50 AM PST for a panel discussion led by Peter Durlach, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, Nuance.
4. Engage with Partner Programs at HLTH
Patient engagement and experience have become an ever-pressing priority for healthcare stakeholders of all stripes following COVID-19. This event, on Sunday, November 13, 2022, from 9:30 AM to 1:00 PM PST, will explore how providers and payers are focusing on patient-centricity in the light of a pandemic that kept many people at home, as well as how they and others are working towards more equitable care for all. This partner-led session moderated by Jack Stockert, Managing Director of Health 2047,and speakers from Zebra Technologies, Nuance Communications, August Artists, and Intermountain Healthcare will discuss how the patient journey can be improved.
5. Meet with Microsoft for Startups
Increasingly, health tech startups are aligning themselves with Microsoft, bringing innovation, diverse perspectives, and digital transformation to the healthcare industry. We are honored that so many of the new generation of innovators trust Microsoft to be their platform partner. And we’re thrilled to offer the opportunity to set up meetings with the following health and life sciences innovators at HLTH: Anjuna, Bayesian Health, Cynerio, Hyro, Pangaea Data, Recuro Health, Sonavi Labs, and Vastmindz. Hear a five-minute quick pitch from each at the October webinar.
If you’re interested in meeting with health tech startup organizations, please email us at [email protected] to set up a one-to-one meeting, in Meeting Cube MC-1067.
Next Steps
Join us at HLTH 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada from November 13 to 16, 2022, and use the discount code “Microsoft150” to receive a $150 discount on the prevailing registration cost for the event. We are excited to share our vision for innovation around healthcare and encourage you to learn more at our meeting spaces for the US Health & Life Sciences (MC-467), Microsoft for Startups (MC-1067), and Nuance (MC-966).
Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare
Deliver better experiences, insights, and care with Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare.
– On World Sight Day, Haleon and Microsoft are launching a joint effort to make health products more accessible for people who are blind or have low vision, with artificial intelligence (AI) technology that narrates product labels. – New enhancements in the free Microsoft Seeing AI app will help advance inclusivity and improve accessibility. – Across the U.S. and U.K., consumers will hear important label information for over 1,500 everyday consumer health products such as Sensodyne, Centrum, Emergen-C, ChapStick and Aquafresh.
Microsoft Seeing AI app scans Sensodyne barcode for health information.
REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 12, 2022 — On Wednesday, Haleon, a global leader in consumer health, and Microsoft Corp. announced a new collaboration to make everyday health more accessible for people who are blind, have low vision or have difficulty reading product labels due to low literacy. Together, the companies are expanding functionality in the Microsoft Seeing AI app to provide consumers with more detailed labelling information for over 1,500 Haleon products across the U.S. and U.K. Seeing AI is a free mobile app designed to help people who have trouble seeing by narrating the world around them.
With today’s launch on World Sight Day, people will hear packaging information through Seeing AI by scanning the barcode of Haleon products. This will provide an audio read-out of important information, such as product name, ingredients and usage instructions. Through Seeing AI’s enhanced functionality, Haleon will help empower people to care for their own health independently by listening to label information narrated through the Seeing AI application.
Haleon’s inaugural Health Inclusivity Index, which sets a new global standard for measuring health inclusivity, makes clear that to improve health inclusivity, individuals and communities need to be provided with the power and the tools to truly take their health into their own hands. Haleon, driven by its purpose to deliver better everyday health with humanity, is committed to helping make healthcare more achievable, inclusive and sustainable. The Seeing AI collaboration with Microsoft is one of Haleon’s first new initiatives to champion health inclusivity. The Microsoft Seeing AI app can be a benefit to:
The 1 million Americans who live with blindness (CDC, “Fast Facts of Common Eye Disorders, https://www.cdc.gov/visionhealth/basics/ced/fastfacts.htm)
The 12 million U.S. adults over the age of 40 who are blind or have low vision (CDC, “Fast Facts of Common Eye Disorders, https://www.cdc.gov/visionhealth/basics/ced/fastfacts.htm)
The Seeing AI app was developed by a team of Microsoft engineers spearheaded by project lead and engineering manager Saqib Shaikh, who lost his sight at the age of seven and was driven to develop the app by his passion for using technology to improve people’s lives.
Saqib Shaikh, engineering manager at Microsoft, said: “I’m really excited to see the launch of this enhanced product recognition functionality, developed in collaboration with Haleon. Seeing AI’s intelligent barcode scanner plays audio cues to help you find the barcode, and now the information displayed for Haleon products is coming straight from the manufacturer, providing richer information including usage instructions and ingredients. This can be invaluable for someone who cannot read the label, leading to greater independence.”
Katie Williams, U.S. chief marketing officer at Haleon said, “We believe everyone should have access to self-care products, services and the information needed to make informed, proactive choices about their health needs. Haleon initiated this collaboration with Microsoft via its Seeing AI app to make consumer health more accessible, achievable and inclusive. We are proud to help make better everyday health more in reach for the blind and those with low vision.”
The Seeing AI app is free to download from the Apple App Store and will be available on Android in the future. To use Seeing AI on Haleon’s products, users should hold their phone camera over the packaging barcode. The app will read out the product name and all text on the package. Users can skip ahead or move back to the relevant section they want to listen to, for example, which flavor or how to use the product. The Haleon barcode functionality will launch today in the U.S. and U.K. first, with plans to expand globally and add additional languages in the future.
About Haleon U.S.
Haleon (NYSE: HLN) is a leading global consumer health company with a portfolio of brands trusted daily by millions of people. In the United States, the organization employs more than 4,700 people who are united by Haleon’s powerful purpose to deliver better everyday health with humanity. Haleon’s products span five categories: Oral Health, Pain Relief, Respiratory Health, Digestive Health, and Wellness. Built on scientific expertise, innovation, and deep human understanding, Haleon’s brands include Abreva, Advil, Benefiber, Centrum, ChapStick®, Emergen-C, Excedrin, Flonase, Gas-X, Natean, Nexium, Nicorette, Parodontax, Polident, Preparation H, Pronamel, Sensodyne, Robitussin, Theraflu, TUMS, Voltaren, and more. For more information on Haleon and its brands, please visit www.haleon.com or contact [email protected].
About the Haleon Health Inclusivity Index
Today’s announcement closely follows the launch of the Health Inclusivity Index, developed by Economist Impact and supported by Haleon. The world-first global study of 40 countries measures how successful countries are in using policy to remove the personal, social, cultural, and political barriers which could otherwise prevent people and communities from achieving good physical and mental health. The number of countries assessed in the study will grow to over 80 over the next two years as part of a new three-year partnership between Haleon and Economist Impact. The report has been commissioned by Haleon as part of its commitment to making better everyday health more achievable, inclusive and sustainable, with the company aiming to create more opportunities for people to be included in everyday health, reaching 50 million people a year by 2025.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
For more information, press only:
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, [email protected]
Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at https://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts.
COVID-19 brought a variety of challenges to the US population. One of the most significant was reaching underprivileged, underserved, and undocumented communities for COVID-19 testing and vaccinations.
The California Health Medical Reserve Corps (CHMRC) is an authorized medical reserve corps that works to close gaps in care delivery between healthcare, public health, response organizations, payers, and community-based health organizations. With the power of Microsoft technology, CHMRC and non-profit organizations were able to deliver COVID-19 testing and vaccines to those in need at an unprecedented rate. In October 2022, the Microsoft team will join CHMRC at the 2022 ISM Annual Conference & Expo to discuss this topic, and much more.
Engaging with all residents
Rapidly changing federal, state, and local guidance and protocols for face-masking, social distancing, working remotely, and vaccination requirements meant that significant groups of the state’s population lacked the means or ability to comply. Identifying and addressing the real needs of underserved populations was especially challenging, necessitating innovative collaborations at the intersection of healthcare, public health, and community organizations. Engaging these residents required flexible, scalable, and secure information sharing and cooperation among a variety of agencies and health entities.
For instance, rapid drive-through mass testing and vaccination sites were created to quickly provide services to residents where it was needed most. There was also a need to provide support to those communities who may be hesitant, untrusting, or hard-to-reach.
“Trust is hard to build, and even harder to maintain and grow. Our population speaks many languages, have limited digital skills, lack cell phone, and internet access, and fear and distrust government and large institutions. Through the Microsoft solution, CHMRC was able to capture data, provide continuity of care, and enable these sites with supportive and necessary technology. Partnering with Microsoft enabled CHMRC to not only garner trust and be accountable to those most in need, but we are also now engaged with those communities and the organizations they trust on an ongoing basis.”—Dan Desmond, CHMRC Executive Director, MRC Director.
As the pandemic grew, California, like many other states and territories, faced a nearly insurmountable challenge with multiple regional immunization registries, reporting systems that had supported small outbreaks hit with millions of test results, and the digital divide between healthcare and public health requiring most case reports to be faxed and entered manually.
“CHMRC faced three challenges that the ‘technology first’ approach was not addressing: Privacy of individual information, support in rural locations with limited connectivity, and flexibility to adapt on the fly to meet community needs. Microsoft worked with us to quickly bring technology enabled care to those that needed it, rather than forcing them to come to large mass-vaccination sites.”—Dan Desmond, CHMRC Executive Director, MRC Director.
Responding at unprecedented speed
Because it was at the center of the crisis, CHMRC grasped the importance of data-coordination and feedback-sharing. It worked with state and local public health agencies to ensure that its new solution, Vaccines for All (V4A), addressed the gaps and took advantage of systems already in place.
“When COVID started, we realized that all the advanced technology and systems lacked the flexibility to adapt to the situation. Microsoft 365 E5 gave us the power, security, and flexibility to solve this challenge. Now, almost every feature in Microsoft 365 E5 has been used as we move beyond the pandemic to build stronger, healthier, and more resilient communities.”—Dan Desmond, CHMRC Executive Director, MRC Director.
The first phase of the V4A project was to improve inter-agency collaboration, boost COVID-19 test collection, distribute more rapid tests, and deliver education in non-clinical settings such as farms, churches, community centers, parks, and schools. Critical to the project was the ability to securely collect personal information and make it usable for legacy healthcare and public health systems.
The first phase of V4A successfully connected multiple systems and, with the help of Microsoft Azure Active Directory, set the stage for the second phase. The second phase benefited from several weeks of planning and preparation as access to COVID-19 vaccinations expanded beyond healthcare workers and those at critical risk. Meanwhile, COVID-19 testing needs expanded as a requirement or vaccination alternative to resume work or attend events.
The three key components of V4A Phase Two were:
Enhance Microsoft Vaccine Management (MVM) to support walk-up and ad-hoc vaccinations in addition to the existing capabilities for mass vaccination sites.
Integrate MVM with the existing solution platform and quickly extend it to include a multi-language call center providing online support, registration to those without the capability, and identifying other needs such as scheduling transportation and providing clear, consistent messaging for public health to community partners.
CHMRC participation in Vaccine Equity Consortium (VEC) started by Microsoft together with Easter Seals, United Way Worldwide, and other partners.
Moving forward
The value of the Vaccine Equity Initiative cannot be understated as it has brought lessons learned and best practices from across the country that helped to quickly expand and enhance the V4A Project. Other communities in California, Washington, Georgia, and Mississippi provided advice and valuable insights to CHMRC and the VEC. CHMRC, through the Vaccine Equity Consortium, is working now to make this technology platform available globally.
Today, V4A is entering its third phase: COVID Catch-Up. This phase expands healthcare services to include Medicaid enrollment, wellness checks, past-due vaccinations, and more.
Join us at the 2022 ISM Annual Conference & Expo
We invite you to attend the upcoming session on how technology enables health equity at the 2022 ISM Annual Conference & Expo. You will hear directly from CHMRC and Microsoft about how technology helps deliver essential health services to underserved, vulnerable, and disadvantaged populations. We’ll also demonstrate how the VEC public-private partnership model may serve as an operational model for addressing global healthcare disparities.
This blog has been co-authored by Steve Kearney, PharmD, Global Medical Director, SAS.
This blog is part of a series in collaboration with our partners and customers leveraging the newly announced Azure Health Data Services. Azure Health Data Services, a platform as a service (PaaS) offering designed to support Protected Health Information (PHI) in the cloud, is a new way of working with unified data—providing care teams with a platform to support both transactional and analytical workloads from the same data store and enabling cloud computing to transform how we develop and deliver AI across the healthcare ecosystem.
There is a dichotomy in health care technology. Despite new developments in imaging, diagnostics, treatment, and surgical techniques, the lack of data standardization in the industry has trapped health insights in functional silos. Providers and payers alike struggle to manually reconcile incompatible file formats, which slows the transfer of information and negatively impacts quality care and patient experience.
Microsoft, along with partners such as global analytics software company SAS, are driving towards increased interoperability through enabling the use of standards such as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®). Together, SAS and Microsoft Azure are building deep technology integrations that unlock value by making disparate data and advanced analytics more accessible to health and life science organizations. With new capabilities such as the integration from Azure Health Data Services to SAS on Azure, the embedded AI capabilities of SAS Health are more efficient and secure, expanding the possibilities of patient-centric innovation and trusted collaboration across the health landscape.
FHIR puts the patient at the center of the health care ecosystem. When querying information in the previous HL7 format, the query is answered with the entire patient dataset that must be parsed to find the information desired for predictive modeling. Additionally, data would require harmonization within and across the organization, creating limitations on available data. In contrast, harmonized FHIR datasets persisting on Azure Health Data Services enable FHIR-based requests directed to the specific data points required, speeding up queries to near-real-time and protecting patient data.
While FHIR’s footprint in the industry is small compared to HL7’s, the global adoption of the FHIR standard is growing. Major electronic health records (EHR) companies like Cerner and Epic are moving quickly to support FHIR.1 Notably in the United States, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has mandated its use for health insurance payers and providers.
Transform your analytical experience in the health cloud
The integration between Azure Health Data Services and SAS Health can be transformational for organizations who have struggled to operationalize analytics. Not only does this integration offer a technology that is secure, fast, and scalable, it democratizes analytics by allowing the business or clinical user to query a patient data set using a pre-set parameter or algorithm and return results within a clinical workflow.
The traditional view of health analytics is that it occurs outside the process of care and is in some way removed from the patient. That’s changing, thanks to secure health cloud environments like Azure Health Data Services and presents the opportunity for more real-time integration of patient and claims data. With the evolution of the citizen data scientist and respective interoperability, we now see a clearer path from analytics to improved health care outcomes.
The graphic below illustrates the role of health data analytic interoperability in health and life sciences. Ultimately, the use of diverse health data throughout the process of care in a shared cloud environment will enable better outcomes for us all.
SAS Health and Azure Health Data Services
The embedded-AI capabilities of SAS Health running on FHIR data ingested through Azure Health Data Services provide game-changing advantages across health care delivery and research.
Providers
SAS Health on FHIR gives speedy access to analytic insights within EHRs, parsing out only the information needed, allowing near-real-time results from, for example, pharmacy claims, laboratory results, or imaging. Predictive insights such as medication adherence or emerging health risks are more available through a secure FHIR-based exchange. Quality care and patient satisfaction increase when providers can integrate data across multiple systems and record types including patient records and claims data into a single view.
Payers
Payers governed by CMS are already mandated to transition to FHIR-based communication standards and are experiencing early wins. For example, adjudication of claims is one of the most time-consuming parts of the payer process. With FHIR, payers can securely query patient records to determine medical necessity of a service or procedure and whether appropriate authorization was obtained, cutting time dramatically in the process. With FHIR’s extensibility beyond the payer-provider core, pharmacy data can be queried to inform proactive disease management programs with specialty drugs and more real-time formulary approvals to meet patient needs.
Academic researchers
For clinical research, data sharing can be a common, time-consuming obstacle. FHIR-ready datasets can accelerate the generation of new health insights and expand the universe of data types for research, including social determinants of health, real-world data, genetics, device data from the internet of medical things, and more.
Ultimately, these innovations in health data analytic interoperability can make insights faster across the vast ecosystem of professionals who are committed to a healthier world. While technology is only one part of the solution, improving health begins with predicting future health risks and taking proactive steps to mitigate disease and promote physical and mental wellness.
Do more with your data with Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare
With Azure Health Data Services, health organizations can transform their patient experience, discover new insights with the power of machine learning and AI, and manage PHI data with confidence. Enable your data for the future of healthcare innovation with Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare.
We look forward to being your partner as you build the future of health.
®FHIR is a registered trademark of Health Level Seven International, registered in the U.S. Trademark Office and are used with their permission.
The healthcare industry has been accelerating its digital transformation journey—addressing challenges to meet the needs of patients, providers, and payors. At the heart of this evolution is the need to connect disparate data sources to unlock end-to-end views of patients and resources. Capitalizing on this further is the opportunity for real-time communication and collaboration tools to improve coordination and information flow. Our approach is centered on these needs, enabling healthcare organizations to bring data and information flows together with rich insights and experiences that enable them to improve patient care and operations
As part of this focus, we are announcing new previews and general availability updates to Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. This release reflects customer and partner feedback and deepens our commitment to helping healthcare providers and patients:
Better navigate data through enhancing patient engagement.
Empower team collaboration.
Improve clinical and operational insights.
Enable further expansion of the global availability of our Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare solutions.
A holistic and connected view of your patients
Getting a 360-degree view of patients is essential for providing quality care. Our updated unified patient view is capable of displaying demographic and clinical data across our solutions. Healthcare teams can see relevant information faster through better visualizations. We aggregate data sources into actionable patient insights, allowing the provider to identify care gaps based on patient demographics and clinical data. Access to clinical and non-clinical form information can also be determined by security roles.
The new unified patient view standalone offering enables end-to-end scenarios leveraging low code solutions from Microsoft Power Apps, enabling providers and partners to create custom applications with consistent patient views. Learn how to build model-driven applications.
Figure 1: Non-clinical patient information view.Figure 2: Clinical form highlights important patient information.
Solving the common issue of fragmented and multiple records for a single patient, we now offer better support for Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) record merge capabilities. The new, generally available patient links enables the ability to view “rolled-up” patient data. Administrators and patient data specialists can now maintain Health Level Seven (HL7) FHIR® patient links (merge patients).
Figure 3: Consolidated patient resources are shown in a patient record, with access to linked records.
We are making it easy for clinicians to cut through the clutter of fragmented systems so they can focus on providing the best possible care using data from a variety of sources. Virtual Visit for Teams integration into Cerner Electric Health Records (EHR), now generally available, allows clinicians to easily launch a virtual patient visit directly from Cerner EHR. Embedded in the solution includes capabilities such as the ability to track if SMS notifications have been sent to the patient or to copy and re-send visit links.
Figure 4: Clinician view of patient information connected to on deck virtual visit.
Bringing data together
The volume of data produced by the healthcare industry from disparate sources including legacy systems is often large, unstructured, and not universally accessible. How healthcare organizations capture, store, interact, and leverage data is critical for clinical and operational effectiveness—both to enable insights and experiences. As such, data is at the very core of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. To help healthcare organizations improve insights, regardless of where the data resides, Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare helps customers structure their data with the healthcare data model and the Azure Health data services.
Our newly released Azure Health Data Services is technology for Protected Health Information (PHI) in the cloud. It is also one of the only generally available solutions of its kind to ingest, manage, and transform a combination of clinical, imaging, and MedTech data formats into other data standards like Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) and Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM). While other solutions exist for clinical and imaging data, Azure Health Data Services provides the most holistic view of the patient by unifying these three key types of health data. With Azure Health Data Services,you can bring together diverse datasets and streaming data from medical devices in the cloud.
Making sure data can be shared securely for research and AI development is what will bring about truly powerful change. Azure Health Data Services creates a strong cloud foundation for big data, which makes deep AI and machine learning possible. Azure Health Data Services can connect to Microsoft Power BI and Azure Synapse Analytics for visualizations and analytics, use SMART on FHIR apps to build new applications, and apply machine learning to create new algorithms for diagnosis assistance and research. As we look to the future, we also are building strong strategic partnerships with key health technology start-ups such as Truveta to integrate lifesaving and democratizing capabilities. Our recent acquisition of Nuance further brings AI, machine learning, and other leading-edge capabilities to Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare.
Optimize data footprints with real-time data routing
When utilizing data to support business processes, such as a patient service center, organizations often ingest data from multiple systems. No single system hosts all the data—and controlling how much data is duplicated between systems is a priority to ensure efficient technology architecture. Today we are announcing the release of virtual health data tables. This capability optimizes the cloud storage spend, allowing organizations to virtualize their clinical reference data when using model-driven applications. Health data can remain where it is, or it can be transferred to Microsoft Dataverse, which allows organizations to securely store and manage data that can easily be used by business applications. This new feature takes advantage of Dataverse virtual tables combined with a health data routing concept, allowing dynamic switching of the underlying data source between native Dataverse storage and direct access to external Azure Health Data Services for select healthcare tables. For more details, read our FAQ.
Figure 5: Power Platform App can fetch data from Dataverse or do an external real-time fetch from other sources, including Azure Health Data Services.
Dataverse Health Data Exchange API, upcoming preview in May, is a new data interoperability method that allows organizations to move data between cloud for healthcare solutions and health information systems, that expose data as FHIR Bundles. These features work in environments with or without FHIR server implementations. With the Dataverse Health Data Exchange API, organizations get full control of the integration architecture, rules, and logic.
Figure 6: New integration approach providing improved interoperability while protecting patient data. Figure 7: Production environment using Logic App Workflows, Azure Storage and Azure Service Bus Queue.
Work intuitively with natural language processing
Organizations can further leverage analytics through natural language processing to improve the delivery of clinical insights with our preview release of Text Analytics free text to FHIR feature. This enables healthcare organizations to find and label valuable information in unstructured clinical documents, transforming them into bundles of interconnected, hierarchical FHIR resources that adhere to core FHIR guidelines.
Figure 8: Text analytics entity recognition and linking, relation extraction and assertion detection.
Empower your healthcare team with collaborative tools
Care managers often manage hundreds of patients with limited time; they need clear visibility into planned activities and tasks to better organize their day. The need for timely touchpoints with patients to support care plan adherence is part of our collaboration focus. We are delivering a more focused workplace for care coordinators to help organize their appointments and follow-ups with intuitive charts to understand progress, upcoming activities, and immediate next actions. We are releasing a new Care Plan Activities Dashboard, in preview, that provides care coordinator and care management views with filtering capabilities.
Figure 9: Care Plan Activities Dashboard includes actionable charts and data for care managers and coordinators.
As part of our investment to help onboard new team members quickly and keep the whole workforce aligned, we are releasing guided tours. This feature is immediately available in the Care Management solution and will be available in other solutions in future updates. Organizations can onboard new users and highlight new features with ease—including in-app guides that describe frequently used features and scenarios. Users can continue to interact with the solution in the background as they are guided through the product. The homepage also provides how-to guides and resources to help the care coordination teams make the most of the care management solution and increase job satisfaction.
Figure 10: Guided Tours for Care Management view.
We enable organizations to build and deploy AI-powered, compliant, and white-labeled experiences at scale. Last month we announced new templates for Azure Health Bot, our intelligent and industry-relevant conversational service, to quickly build custom scenarios for popular healthcare use cases—saving teams valuable time and ensuring consistent quality of care. Azure Health Bot allows healthcare organizations to instantly build bot scenarios for collecting secure and compliant responses directly from patients for use cases like triage, flu vaccinations, and more. This release expands the catalog with new templates for self-reporting of quality-of-life measures and chronic condition management.
Figure 11: Azure Health Bot Scenario Template Catalog.
Healthcare organizations can accelerate their business processes by automating information extraction; applying AI and machine learning frameworks that utilize analytics data to assist in many different processes. With Azure Forms Recognizer, patients can take photos of their identifications and insurance cards and submit them before arriving at their appointments, reducing data capture errors and manual effort. Learn how customers like HCA Healthcare are using Azure Forms Recognizer to cut down on administrative time spent entering repetitive card data into their care system
Where we’re headed: A global commitment
Microsoft is committed to supporting customers around the globe. Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare previously available in eight countries is expanding our offering to include another nine countries—Switzerland, Brazil, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, Ireland, New Zealand, and the Philippines. Further, as part of our commitment to providing a complete product experience, healthcare solutions are now available in ten languages: English, French, Dutch, German, Danish, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese.
Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare is continually expanding its ability to provide a unified approach that enables healthcare organizations to compete and grow through greater efficiency and improved patient and workforce experiences—ultimately resulting in delivery of care faster, better, and at a lower cost. We are excited about how this series of updates builds on our strong foundation, and for our continued future investment in healthcare. You can learn more about Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare by signing up to stay informed and following us on social.
FHIR® is the registered trademark of HL7 and is used with the permission of HL7.
