Microsoft launches a new healthcare AI tool to help reduce the workload of doctors and nurses

According to the financial news app Zhitong Finance, Microsoft (MSFT.US) announced on Thursday new healthcare data and artificial intelligence tools, including a series of medical imaging models, a healthcare agent service, and an automated document solution for nurses. These tools are designed to help healthcare organizations build AI applications faster and save clinical doctors time on administrative tasks, which is a major cause of industry burnout. According to a report from the American College of Surgeons, nurses spend up to 41% of their time on paperwork. "By integrating AI into healthcare, our goal is to alleviate the pressure on medical staff, promote collaboration within medical teams, and improve the overall efficiency of the national healthcare system," said Mary Varghese Presti, Vice President of Portfolio Evolution and Incubation at Microsoft Health and Life Sciences. These new tools are the latest evidence of Microsoft's efforts to establish itself as a leader in the field of healthcare AI. Last October, the company released a range of health features on its Azure cloud and Fabric analytics platform. It also acquired Nuance Communications for $16 billion in 2021, which provides AI solutions for healthcare and other industries, including speech-to-text technology. Many of the solutions announced by Microsoft on Thursday are still in early development stages or are in preview. Healthcare institutions will test and validate them before broader adoption by the company. Microsoft declined to disclose the prices of these new tools. In August this year, Microsoft announced the next phase of its collaboration with Epic Systems, focusing on developing an AI document tool for nurses, which the company detailed on Thursday. Epic is a healthcare software provider with electronic health records for over 280 million Americans. The company has had a longstanding partnership with Microsoft. Nuance, owned by Microsoft, already offers an automated document tool for doctors called DAX Copilot, which was released last year. It allows doctors to record patient encounters with consent, and AI automatically converts these records into clinical notes and summaries. Ideally, this means doctors do not have to spend time manually documenting patient encounters. This technology has gained popularity this year. In January, Nuance announced that DAX Copilot was fully integrated into Epic's electronic health records, a long-awaited milestone in the healthcare industry. Directly integrating tools like DAX Copilot into doctors' EHR workflows means they can access it without switching applications, saving time and reducing administrative burden. So far, DAX Copilot is only available to doctors. Microsoft stated that this is changing, as they are developing a similar optimization tool for nurses. Presti mentioned during the briefing, "Nursing workflows are very different from those of doctors, and any solution developed for nurses needs to align with their work processes." "Our team spent hours shadowing nurses on shifts to see how they perform tasks and identified where their biggest pain points are during the day." Microsoft is collaborating with organizations such as Stanford Healthcare, Northwestern Medicine, and Tampa General Hospital to develop this software.