Microsoft Health Clouds Designed For Healthcare

When you think of major tech companies foraying into the healthcare space, Apple and Google probably come to mind first. But Microsoft is quietly working to carve out its own niche in the industry, too. While the company hasn’t been as flashy in its forays into healthcare as its rivals, its efforts have been significant and substantial.

At its virtual Build conference today, the tech giant announced a new series of industry-specific cloud offerings called “Microsoft Industry Clouds.” The first is designed for healthcare and is available in a public preview with a free six-month trial. Powered by Microsoft Azure, it includes tools that help healthcare organizations engage patients and facilitate team collaboration while improving operational efficiency with stringent security measures.

One key element is a chatbot for patients to manage appointment bookings, reminders and bill payments. Another is a secure hub for doctors to communicate with each other and with patients. Medical situations move quickly, so it’s important that information is delivered in a timely manner and that communications meet strict security requirements.

Another important component is the ability to extract insights and improve care with AI. This includes pre-built models for clinical trial matching and oncology phenotyping, which identify cancer attributes from unstructured documents. These can be used to help match patients with available clinical trials, assess health inequities and more.