ORLANDO, Fla. – Microsoft has announced advancements in cloud technologies for healthcare and life sciences with the general availability of Azure Health Data Services and updates to Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare.

Combined with the recent close of its acquisition of Nuance Communications, Microsoft seeks to amplify healthcare organizations' ability to help others by leveraging artificial intelligence to address the biggest challenges transforming the future of healthcare.

Interoperability for better outcomes and clinical advances

The goal of Azure Health Data Services is interoperability that drives better patient outcomes and clinical advances. The health industry generates an overwhelming amount of data, much of which is unstructured and inaccessible. Oftentimes, this data sits in silos and is not used to its full potential.

Within that data lies the power to deliver better patient care and outcomes, provide further clinical advances and accelerate research breakthroughs, Microsoft said. The key to unlocking the data is interoperability across the entire health ecosystem. Microsoft took a step to address health data interoperability with Azure API for FHIR in 2019. The company's next evolution of that journey is Azure Health Data Services.

Azure Health Data Services is built for protected health information and brings together diverse datasets — like clinical, imaging and streaming data from medical devices — in the cloud using global interoperability standards of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) and Digital Imaging Communications in Medicine (DICOM).

Azure Health Data Services ingests, manages and transforms a combination of clinical, imaging and medtech data. It provides a holistic view of the patient by unifying all three types of health data.

More powerful search results

Metadata from medical images and medical devices can be read alongside clinical information, yielding more powerful results when a provider or researcher searches and queries patient information, Microsoft said.

Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare aims to enhance patient experiences and health team collaboration. It provides integrated capabilities designed to make it easier for organizations to create personalized patient experiences, give health teams connected collaboration tools and adopt data standards important to healthcare.

There are several updates and new features designed to strengthen Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. The improvements aim to transform the healthcare journey, using AI to give full visibility into data, reduce provider administrative burden, boost productivity for care teams on the frontline, increase workflow automation that can improve quality of care, reduce clinician burnout, and deliver better care faster and at a lower cost, Microsoft said.

New features that enhance patient and clinician experiences include:

• New features in Microsoft Teams for virtual appointments, including the ability for patients to request on-demand appointments with their provider and new analytics capabilities that give providers key insights into the performance of virtual appointments.
• Enhanced clinical workflow integrations in Teams, including the general availability of the Microsoft Teams EHR connector for Cerner (a Cerner-validated application), which enables clinicians to launch virtual appointments and consult with other providers in Teams directly from their health record system.
• Enhancements to Azure Health Bot templates, enabling organizations to quickly develop scenarios for self-reporting quality-of-life measurements and chronic condition management through virtual agents.
• Updates to the Patient View, which provides insights into demographic and clinical patient information.

Microsoft is at HIMSS22 in Booth 2300.

Salesforce builds on patient care tech

At HIMSS22, Salesforce has announced it will expand its offerings for healthcare and life sciences companies with new enhancements for its Salesforce Customer 360 for Health. Companies including Teladoc Health and Ovation Medical will use these new capabilities, which build on offerings rolled out in 2021.

"Healthcare leaders are looking to create streamlined ways for their employees to collaborate while keeping patients at the center of care," said Kevin Riley, senior vice president and general manager, healthcare and life sciences, at Salesforce. "These new innovations make that possible and help healthcare and life sciences organizations of all shapes and sizes adapt and grow in more tech-enabled ways."

Patient Care Coordination enabled by Slack will allow care teams and healthcare organizations to access apps that help improve patient case management and outcomes. Care coordinators will be able to connect with colleagues and patients through alerts, messages and workflows from a secure platform.

With Patient Virtual Care, providers will have the framework to connect with their patients remotely and schedule check-ins, complementing traditional in-person visits. For example, a patient whose lack of transportation makes it difficult to get to their appointment on time could use Patient Virtual Care to connect with their physician virtually.

More holistic view of the patient

With Patient Unified Health Scoring, care teams, providers and payers can combine clinical data – such as blood pressure and temperature – with non-clinical data – such as demographic and environmental information – to provide a more holistic view of the patient. Patient Unified Health Scoring also provides actionable insights that can help identify potential risks the patients may face and help inform the next-best course of action for that patient.

Patient Unified Health Scoring is integrated with the Patient Data Platform, which helps customers connect all their end-customer data in a single place while also meeting their HIPAA-compliant responsibilities.

Now, patient and member experience managers can capture and segment patient and member data from disparate systems to help create a more patient holistic profile, personalize the engagement, and recommend follow-up care and programs for prevention.

"Salesforce's new innovations will enable organizations to provide care from anywhere and offer insight into clinical and medical risks at the population level," said Amit Khanna, senior vice president of Health Cloud, at Salesforce. "We're excited to empower healthcare and life sciences organizations with the technology they need to personalize service and communications at scale by keeping patient-centric experiences top of mind."

Salesforce is at HIMSS22 in Booth 4559.

Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the writer: bsiwicki@himss.org
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