Microsoft brings clinicians its cloud and its AI technology

Microsoft and Providence St. Joseph Health announced a multi-year strategic partnership that will leverage cloud-based technology enterprise expertise and productivity tools in a collaborative workplace to enable new developments in data-based care in more than 850 health care clinics and hospitals, employing nearly 119,000 caregivers.

The announcement is further proof that Microsoft is reorienting its healthcare strategy: the technology giant is turning away from consumer products and focusing on enterprise solutions – a decision we identified after the company shut down its business. health records system, HealthVault, in April.

Here is what it means: Microsoft views healthcare as a growth opportunity for Azure Cloud Services, whose overall market share is being overtaken by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

• Microsoft is pursuing more partnerships in the healthcare industry to boost its services in the cloud. Last year, Microsoft officially unveiled plans for its health division and leveraged the cloud: since this announcement, Microsoft has signed cloud partnerships and AI with Walmart, Walgreens and now Providence St. Joseph. In the case of the partnership with Walmart, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, stressed that the rivalry shared between the companies and Amazon was essential for the development of the transaction.
• But there is still a lot to do if she wants to dethrone Amazon as the king of the cloud. There is no doubt that Microsoft wants to capitalize on the $ 11.4 billion spent by health care companies for cloud computing this year, in order to reduce the gap between Azure and AWS: Amazon is expected to control nearly 50 percent of the global cloud computing market by the end of this year, with Microsoft ranking second with a forecast of 22 percent, according to a Goldman Sachs report provided to Business Insider. But competition to control the cloud market is expected to be fierce, as Amazon is also expanding its cloud offerings for healthcare customers with new software options, including three new HIPAA-compliant machine learning tools.

The largest image: We expect health systems to continue to rely on the experience of high-tech companies in the transfer and badysis of large amounts of data – which they need to overcome. the barrier of interoperability in health care.

Big tech can help pave the way for transformational technologies in the healthcare sector by streamlining health data sharing – a win for hospitals and data-hungry developers. Six major technology companies, including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, announced plans last year to work toward improving the interoperability of healthcare.

The Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) Data Standard – a more agile and user-friendly method for sharing health data across health organizations and between organizations – was adopted 82% in the US last year , which should help providers to release information buried in their vast troves of patient data.

However, using this knowledge to support innovative technologies such as AI diagnostics and precision medicine will require expertise in transferring data across many different platforms, often via robust cloud-based networks. – something most companies in the health sector do not know. This means that the sky is the limit for any major technology company that can establish itself as a leader in cloud computing technology in the healthcare industry.

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