Microsoft announced Thursday that it is unveiling several artificial intelligence enhancements in Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare innovations, including new healthcare AI models in Azure AI Studio, new healthcare data capabilities in Microsoft Fabric and developer tools in Copilot Studio. Many of the artificial intelligence enhancements are available by preview.

Executives from the company also provided additional details about its AI-driven nursing workflow collaboration with Epic during a media briefing on Tuesday. 

"Across the broader healthcare and life sciences industry, these advancements are dramatically enhancing patient care and also rekindling the joy of practicing medicine for clinicians," said Joe Petro, corporate vice president of healthcare and life sciences solutions and platforms at Microsoft, in a statement explaining the new capabilities.

Capturing genAI data for clinical insights

The ability to integrate structured and unstructured data in Microsoft Fabric is helping to reshape how users access, manage and act on data, the company said. 

Some of the new AI-driven innovations can combine data from electronic health records to generate comprehensive insights and fuel use cases, including clinical imaging, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services claims, social determinants of health, and more, according to Umesh Rustogi, general manager of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare.

"We have had organizations all over the globe basically now started up in the solution to create a unified data hub that can enable them to not only create new insights but also new AI models to improve patient care, create outpatient efficiencies," said Rustogi during the briefing. 

A key new feature is conversational data integration.

The generative AI voice-enabled tool, Nuance’s DAX Copilot, has been generally available for one year, and the company noted in a blog post this past month that is seeing remarkable momentum. 

It's helping doctors at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago in at least 50% of patient encounters, so they are spending an average of 24% less time drafting notes and increasing the number of patients they can see by an average of 11.3, according to the company. 

The health system integrated the AI copilot with its Epic EHR. 

"This integration is now enabling organizations to securely access the DAX Copilot conversational data," including the audio files, draft clinical notes and more, Rustogi said.

Using native analytical tools in Azure and Fabric, healthcare organizations can analyze the data and combine it with other patient data, such as EHR data and patient engagement insights to create comprehensive data.

For example, by consuming and harmonizing national and international SDOH public datasets, healthcare organizations can identify risks and health-related social needs to improve equity in healthcare. 

The tools can also leverage unified healthcare data and care management analytical templates to enhance patient care by identifying high-risk individuals, optimizing treatment plans and improving care coordination, the company said.

New healthcare security application templates that can help govern data are also available in public preview in Microsoft Purview, the company said.

Verifying genAI outputs

A healthcare-specific stack in Copilot Studio – including prebuilt healthcare intelligence and use cases – can now be accessed safely, Hadas Bitran, head of health and life sciences at the Microsoft Israel R&D Center, said Tuesday. 

Bitran leads the development of AI-driven language services, natural language processing technologies, conversational intelligence and personal health assistants. For developers, the clinical safeguards API is available in private preview for additional use cases, she said. 

"These APIs can be used for evaluation for example and additional verification of the generative AI output," she explained. "Clinical prominence helps to identify the source of claims in the answers against the grounding data, or facts."

The safeguard of clinical semantic validation helps to examine if answers to conform to verified clinical standards and ensure trust and stability, she noted.

Automated documentation for nurses

Through a partnership with Epic Systems announced in August, Microsoft is building an AI-powered documentation tool for nurses that Mary Varghese Presti, vice president of portfolio evolution and incubation at Microsoft Health & Life Sciences, said would leverage using Epic Rover to provide the best nurse-centric experience. 

She explained in the media briefing that what inspired the nursing workflow collaboration – beyond high levels of nurse burnout due to administrative burdens – is to enable nurses to be "eyes-free and hands-free" in their documentation.

"We can transform nursing documentation with using voice," she said. "We are also acutely aware that collaborating results in the best experience for nurses. And our goal has been to enable a seamless workflow – not add any more steps." 

The company said it is actively collaborating with Advocate Health, Baptist Health of Northeast Florida, Duke Health, Intermountain Health Saint Joseph Hospital, Mercy, Northwestern Medicine, Stanford Health Care and Tampa General Hospital to build ambient technology that addresses nursing documentation by drafting flowsheets for review.

"AI is transforming nursing workflows by streamlining administrative tasks, allowing nurses to focus more on patient care," Corey Miller, vice president of research and development at Epic, said in a statement.

"Together with Microsoft, we’re using AI-powered ambient-voice technology to populate patient assessments. Nurses using the tool are already sharing positive feedback on how it enhances personalized patient interactions."

Streamlining AI development

A collection of multimodal medical imaging foundation models available in the Azure AI model catalog analyzes diverse data types, including genomics and clinical records.

They were developed in collaboration with partners like Providence and Paige.ai, the company said. With them, healthcare organizations can rapidly build, refine and deploy custom AI tools while minimizing compute and data requirements typically associated with building multimodal models from scratch.

"The development of foundational AI models in pathology and medical imaging is expected to drive significant advancements in cancer research and diagnostics," Dr. Carlo Bifulco, chief medical officer of Providence Genomics, said in a statement.

"These models can complement human expertise by providing insights beyond traditional visual interpretation and, as we move toward a more integrated, multimodal approach, will reshape the future of medicine."

Building safe AI agents

With new tools in Microsoft Copilot Studio, health systems can also build custom AI agents for appointment scheduling, clinical trial matching, patient triage, connected patient experiences, improving clinical workflows and more.

Early adopters, like Cleveland Clinic, helped to develop the service by providing feedback on use in a healthcare setting and are already using it, Microsoft said.

There is a public preview of the healthcare agent service available.

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.