- New Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare to Tackle COVID-19 Challenges
Care teams will also be able to coordinate and deliver seamless care management by coordinating data analytics and care collaboration, the health IT giant stated.
“Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare will allow patients to build a 360-degree patient view while easily leveraging protected health data using FHIR, IoT, EHR and other applications to drive data-driven decisions, accelerate responses, and improve patient care,” Microsoft said.
Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare will also allow clinicians to schedule, manage, and conduct virtual visits, as well as deliver relevant information in a safe and efficient manner.
“We are committed to providing better connectedness to drive even greater outcomes across providers, payors, pharma, and med tech organizations,” Microsoft said.
Microsoft also introduced new 2020 capabilities to help individuals stay collected, collaborate, and build solutions. The healthcare sector of the initiative specifically focuses on Microsoft Teams EHR connector.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many healthcare organizations have boosted their telehealth offerings leveraging Microsoft Teams.
The Microsoft Teams EHR connector will allow clinicians and patients to launch a virtual patient visit or consult with another provider directly from the EHR system.
“The Epic EHR system will be the first to integrate with Teams in this way, and Teams will be available in the Epic App Orchard later this year, enabling customers to launch an EHR-connected virtual visit in Teams directly from the Epic EHR system. Support for other EHR systems is coming soon,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in the announcement.
Additionally, Microsoft introduced the Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX), an artificial intelligence-powered voice-enabled solution.
The solution uses ambient sensing technology to listen to clinician-patient conversations while offering workflow and knowledge automation to complement the EHR, Microsoft said in the announcement.
“The Nuance Dragon Ambient eXperience will integrate with Microsoft Teams, securely capturing and contextualizing physician-patient conversations within Microsoft Teams and providing automated clinical documentation for telehealth visits.”
The Nuance DAX and Teams integration are now available in private preview.
Throughout the pandemic, Microsoft Healthcare Bot Services have positively benefited more than 31 million people across 23 countries, Microsoft reported.
The CDC and various healthcare systems are continuing to leverage these services to create COVID-19 assessment tools and decrease stress on frontline workers. Since March, more than 1,600 instances of COVID-19 bots based on the Microsoft service have gone live.
At the end of May, Microsoft announced Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, its first industry-specific cloud offering that allowed organizations to engage in more proactive ways with their patients.
Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare also brings together trusted integrated capabilities that extend the value of the platform with additional solutions.
The offering will enrich patient engagement, connect health teams to improve collaboration, decision-making, and operational efficiencies, and improve interoperability, security, trust, and create an extensible healthcare partner ecosystem.
“Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare is also aiming to empower health team collaboration by building capabilities in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams to streamline care workflows and provide a secure platform for connected care coordination,” Microsoft said in the May announcement.
“The services to boost workflows include chat, voice, and video meetings, and recording and transcription features.”
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