Microsoft

Published by Daniel at June 1, 2022

Microsoft is crossing frontiers and leading AI innovation by using people-centered strategies to change the future of global health...

Microsoft is a renowned multinational technology company founded in April 1975, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Now headquartered in Washington with subsidiaries in more than one hundred countries, it is the third U.S. public company valued at over 1 trillion USD, after only Apple and Amazon. Its mission is to “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” This has been achieved by entering almost every household and enterprise worldwide with their several products, including Windows, Office, Skype, Dynamics, personal computers, e-mail, and Xbox, used every day by the customers. The company now has more than 160,000 full-time employees.

Microsoft Research is a Microsoft subsidiary founded in 1991 with its own 1000 employees. This division, directed by Corporate Vice President Peter Lee, has eight research labs, four located in the U.S. and the rest in the U.K, China, India, and Canada. Microsoft Research is subdivided into Core Research Lab, Microsoft Research NeXT, and Research AI.(1,2,3)

Great minds think alike

Microsoft AI Research aims to create deep learning machines that cooperate with human reasoning to augment our capacities and experiences. Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s cloud and server leader, is also the Executive Vice President of this AI branch. Along with this division’s several projects on multidisciplinary research and leading innovation, they have set some principles in AI development and practice. This includes fairness, inclusiveness, reliability, safety, transparency, privacy and security, and accountability. The company’s deep learning section considers AI advancement’s goals to be primarily people-centered. This remarkable sense of social responsibility is pursued and regulated by the AI, Ethics and Effects in Engineering and Research (known as the Aether) Committee.(1,2,3)

Globalizing outstanding services

One of the most powerful tools developed by Microsoft AI is Microsoft 365, a cloud-based subscription service that amplifies the power of Microsoft Office apps, intelligent services, and world-class security designed for enterprises.

Both companies have been using Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams to conduct virtual triages and host virtual appointments, providing support during the pandemic. Other note-worthy alliances include the National Health Service (publicly-funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom) and Case Western Reserve University (a famous private research university in Ohio). The cloud allows health information to be available remotely and deliver complete clinical and paraclinical data with safe control of cybersecurity dangers. This cloud service has been crucial for improving assistance to underserved communities and home-bound patients, a common scenario during the COVID-19 pandemic.(4,5,6,7)

Globalizing outstanding services

It can be accessed from home or the office and used in multiple areas, including the healthcare industry.The platform is currently being used in partnerships with various health-related companies such as Phulukisa Healthcare solutions (a South African company that offers e-health services) and Arkin (one of the largest mental health networks in the Netherlands).Both companies have been using Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams to conduct virtual triages and host virtual appointments, providing support during the pandemic.

Other note-worthy alliances include the National Health Service (publicly-funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom) and Case Western Reserve University (a famous private research university in Ohio). The cloud allows health information to be available remotely and deliver complete clinical and paraclinical data with safe control of cybersecurity dangers. This cloud service has been crucial for improving assistance to underserved communities and home-bound patients, a common scenario during the COVID-19 pandemic.(4,5,6,7)

Re-bot-lutionizing user services

AI for health is one of the most recent initiatives from Microsoft. The plan includes a budget of 40 million USD, and the goal is to benefit healthcare around the world, focusing on global health studies, research in the medical AI field, and developing access to current healthcare services that will help to screen several illnesses, including diabetic retinopathy, tuberculosis, and maternal mortality.(6)

Another interesting approach is Microsoft’s healthcare bot, a tool that allows interactions between the end-user and a virtual assistant, usually in a chat-box format. Healthcare organizations can launch bot services capable of interpreting common and complex medical questions using natural language processing and information extraction. This allows the bot to provide comprehensive yet straightforward answers. This tool can integrate information and data from Health Maintenance Organizations, reliable medical literature sources, and providers to allow a more user-friendly platform for customers and beneficiaries. This tool’s answers and references have allowed clients such as Premera Blue Cross, Aurora Healthcare, and Quest diagnostics to reduce the number of calls, decrease response time, and even perform triage via symptoms-checkers .(8)

A helping hand for Clouded minds

Project Talia is centered on the applications of AI in Mental Health. By partnering with SilverCloud Health, an extensive and prestigious virtual mental healthcare provider, Microsoft is exploring the implementation of AI tools to boost critical aspects of Mental Health therapies. These are stratification, personalization, treatment predictions, and measured response, which results in evidence-founded feedback on successful therapeutic strategies. Several studies published in trustworthy sources like the JAMA network have identified associations that will substantially improve patient benefitting tools.(9,10,11)

Medical scribe positions open for... Apps?

Project EmpowerMD targets Electronic Health Record (EHR) filling. It uses Natural Language Processing and medical knowledge in the cloud to implement automation of patient encounter documentation using the dialogue with the healthcare provider.

The tool can be activated or paused during the interview and accurately synthesizes the dialogue between physician and patient in relevant bullets that automatically fill the EHR.

After the interview, the physician inputs their revision and modifications. With every encounter and change, the tool automatically learns and adapts, needing fewer changes as time goes by.(12)

Medical scribe positions open for... Apps?

The tool can be activated or paused during the interview and accurately synthesizes the dialogue between physician and patient in relevant bullets that automatically fill the EHR. After the interview, the physician inputs their revision and modifications. With every encounter and change, the tool automatically learns and adapts, needing fewer changes as time goes by.(12)

Bionic eyes for imaging

Project InnerEye is an image processing platform developed as a fruitful product of the partnership between Microsoft, Cambridge University, and its NHS-affiliated hospitals. The InnerEye Deep Learning toolkit consists of an open-source Deep Learning platform to develop Machine Learning models for complex medical imaging analysis. Some analyses include 3D modeling, segmentations, and scaling used in quantitative radiology, radiation oncology, and surgical planning. These tasks usually take hours and dozens of marks for expert radiologists, whereas this tool has shown to be capable of doing so more efficiently with equal reliability.(13)

Power to materialize ideas

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service offered by Microsoft for the design, development, production, and analysis of projects. It does so through various frameworks, assets, and tools for managing digital projects. Azure’s usefulness and possibilities are as endless as the developer’s mind, with products and devices ranging from telecommunications and analytics to Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning. Microsoft Azure’s strategy includes software, hardware, and infrastructure as services offering a particular developmental field for materializing ideas.(14)

Persistently a noticeable leader

This year, Microsoft has received multiple awards. The company was ranked number 21 in the 2020 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest U. S. corporations by total revenue and number 13 in the Global 2000 List of the World’s Largest Public Companies.It was also recognized in the top ranking of the Global AI for healthcare Radar Award.(15,16)