Wolters Kluwer, Health has announced a partnership with Microsoft to use the Microsoft Azure cloud platform to deliver tools for patient education. Virtual care companies and payer care management also have access to Wolters Kluwer, Health content on Azure.

WHY IT MATTERS

The first phase of the partnership focuses on leveraging Wolters Kluwer’s healthcare information products – UpToDate, Lexicomp and Emmi, a personalized education tool – into new applications, like Digital Health Architect.

The new content-as-a-service solution (CaaS) platform integrates Azure DevOps, Azure Active Directory and Azure Cosmos DB, according to the announcement. 

Healthcare organizations can build their own educational content from a library with more than 600 videos and 8,500 digital educational leaflets accessible in the cloud-based Digital Health Architect. 

Also available is EmmiGuide, which provides payers delivery of evidence-based health education and interactive multimedia at scale to help engage members with content relevant to their individual health.

Greg Samios, president and CEO of Clinical Effectiveness at Wolters Kluwer, said in the announcement that the need for all digital health players, providers and payers to deliver better access and outcomes for patients is a constant despite industry changes and the development of new business models.

"We are proud to partner with them to provide consumers access to patient education that aligns to resources used by their clinicians. Working together, we can reduce variability across that consumer’s health journey and help to improve outcomes," he said.

THE LARGER TREND

Microsoft has also unveiled other patient engagement tools to help facilitate proactive patient care. Last month's updates included new analytics capabilities with health database templates in Azure Synapse and new features like patient trends.

Wolters Kluwer patient education products use a combination of audio and visual content to communicate with patients, according to Evan Heigert, brand and creative director overseeing patient engagement.

Over the past 18 months, the company has focused on creating new programs with more personalization, he told Healthcare IT News during a conversation about diversity, equity and inclusion in patient-facing materials.

"Our north star, our guiding light, is to be able to deliver evidence-based information in a way that is empowering and engaging for those patients," he said.

ON THE RECORD

"Combining the power of the Microsoft Cloud and AI solutions with Wolters Kluwer’s trusted, expert health consumer content will enable healthcare organizations to provide better care and service to the communities they serve," said Tom McGuiness, corporate vice president of global healthcare and life sciences at Microsoft, in the statement. 

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