Microsoft is adding new artificial intelligence tools for healthcare customers, the big tech company announced Thursday.
The company said it has partnered with electronic health record vendor Epic Systems along with several health systems to build an ambient AI solution that will allow nurses to efficiently document in the electronic health record. It was important for the company to create a solution that’s differentiated from the numerous physician-centric AI documentation tools, said Mary Varghese Presti, vice president of portfolio evolution and incubation at Microsoft Health and Life Sciences, during a briefing with reporters.
Related: How clinical documentation became an AI battleground
“The nursing workflow is very different from that of physicians,” said Presti, who is a clinical nurse by training. “Any solution developed for nurses needs to integrate with the way they work. Nurses are mobile, rarely standing still, shifting from patient to patient, juggling a myriad of observations and all the while continually triaging, synthesizing information and working across care teams.”
The goal is to help reduce the time it takes for nurses to take notes and spend less time on paperwork. Microsoft’s tool uses ambient technology to automatically draft nurse flowsheets, a form that gathers information on a patient’s conditions for clinical review.
The company's development of a nurse-centric AI product comes as the profession faces a significant challenge with burnout and a shortage of available talent. In August 2023, the Health and Human Services Department's Health Resources and Services Administration said it was distributing $100 million to select universities and health systems to help expand the nursing pipeline.
Ambient technology, a popular area of development among AI vendors including Microsoft subsidiary Nuance, takes a recording of a clinician-patient conversation and turns it into usable clinical notes in the EHR. Most products are centered on physician documentation rather than nurses.
Microsoft said in the briefing it is working with Charlotte-based Advocate Health, Durham, North Carolina-based Duke Health, Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Health, Tampa (Florida) General Hospital and other health systems to develop the nursing tool. A spokesperson didn't respond to an inquiry on when it would be available to all customers.
In addition to the AI product for nurses, Microsoft also announced it is launching imaging-focused AI models on its cloud computing platform, making healthcare-specific capabilities within its Fabric data analytics software program available to customers and previewing a healthcare-focused AI co-pilot product that will help patients schedule appointments.
Dr. Matthew Lungren, Microsoft Health's chief data science officer, said during the briefing the imaging-focused AI models, developed with Renton, Washington-based Providence, AI vendor Paige.ai and others, will allow providers to analyze multiple data types from medical imaging to genomics and clinical records. The models will help healthcare organizations build and deploy imaging-focused AI solutions that are specific to their needs across multiple specialties.
Microsoft has been active in healthcare's AI boom. In March, it launched a stakeholder group focused on implementing AI guardrails with 16 health systems including Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicine and Boston-based Mass General Brigham. In April 2023, the company announced an AI-centric collaboration with Epic in which the EHR vendor enabled generative AI solutions like OpenAI's GPT-4 through Microsoft's Azure Service.
