Generative AI and the path to personalized medicine with Microsoft Azure
Transforming care for patients and providers alike with Azure OpenAI Service
In the rapidly evolving landscape of healthcare, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t a futuristic vision: It’s a present reality. Azure OpenAI Service is supporting the way care is delivered and experienced by patients and providers alike. As healthcare providers and tech companies collaborate to harness the power of generative AI, they pave the way for more efficient, accessible, and personalized healthcare solutions.
There’s never been a better time to examine how Azure OpenAI Service could assist the healthcare sector. After all, the potential benefits are staggering, ranging from a 50% reduction in treatment costs to a 40% improvement in health outcomes.
A recent report from MarketsandMarkets states that the AI in healthcare market size is estimated to surge from USD 20.9 billion in 2024 to USD 148.4 billion by 2029. As seen in the use cases that follow, the scalability and efficiency of AI applications in healthcare are set are positively impacting patient and healthcare workforce experiences and make personalized medicine a reality for staff and patients around the globe.
Azure OpenAI Service
Below, let’s look at four Microsoft partners who have made it their mission to drive better outcomes for patients and those that serve them, using Azure OpenAI Service.
Kry is providing healthcare for all with Azure
Challenge: Kry sought to leverage technology to improve accessibility, personalize patient care, and alleviate the administrative burdens on clinicians, all while expanding limited healthcare resources.
Azure OpenAI Service Solution: Kry addressed immediate challenges of accessibility, personalization, and administrative efficiency. Kry utilized Azure OpenAI Service to develop AI-driven tools that enable patients to access healthcare services more easily. By integrating generative AI into their platform, they could offer services in over 30 languages, thereby making healthcare more accessible to a global population. Customization ensures that patients receive relevant and effective treatments, improving outcomes and patient satisfaction. By automating routine tasks and streamlining patient data management, clinicians can devote more time to patient care rather than paperwork.
“AI allows Kry clinicians to focus on delivering better care, while ensuring patients can access the advice, care, and treatment they need in the most efficient way”
—Fredrik Nylander, Chief Technology Officer at Kry
This not only enhances the efficiency of healthcare delivery but also addresses the issue of physician burnout. This approach has enabled Kry to become Europe’s largest digital-first healthcare provider, managing over 200 million patient interactions. Through the efficient use of generative AI, more patients can be served with the same or even fewer resources, significantly expanding the impact of healthcare services.
TatvaCare utilizing Azure Open AI to promote patient-centric care
Challenge: Faced with growing healthcare demands and the complexity of managing chronic conditions, TatvaCare sought to deliver more efficient, patient-centric healthcare practices and improved healthcare outcomes.
Azure OpenAI Service Solution: TatvaCare tackled this multifaceted challenge head-on by adopting Azure OpenAI to power AskAI, their intelligent AI assistant. This AI assistant was designed to understand and process patient inquiries and provide feedback in real-time, offering personalized care plans that align with individual patient needs and preferences. The efficiency gained through this automation means that TatvaCare can focus more on direct patient care rather than administrative tasks. For example, about 180,000 prescriptions are currently generated on the platform per month. AskAI, also plays a crucial role in reducing the communication gaps between doctors and patients. The AI assistant’s ability to generate highly accurate, personalized responses and recommendations streamlines the process of managing health, making it less cumbersome and more user-friendly for patients in all stages of their healthcare journey. Not only does Azure’s powerful AI capabilities provide a platform for more efficient interaction between patients and healthcare, but it also guarantees high standards of data security and compliance. Azure’s robust security frameworks ensure that all patient interactions and data handled by AskAI are protected against unauthorized access, maintaining patient confidentiality and trust.
Providence is freeing up time for caregivers with the help of Azure AI
Challenge: Increasingly burdened by administrative tasks and an overwhelming volume of patient communications, how could Providence, a leading healthcare organization, leverage technology to streamline processes, improve the efficiency of message handling, and ultimately free up caregivers to focus more on direct patient care?
Azure OpenAI Service Solution: Providence found an effective solution to these challenges through the development and deployment of ProvARIA, a cutting-edge AI system powered by Azure OpenAI Service. Specifically designed to manage the deluge of incoming messages received by healthcare providers, ProvARIA categorizes messages based on content and urgency, ensuring that critical patient communications are prioritized and addressed promptly. The administrative workload on healthcare providers can often detract from patient care. ProvARIA integrates deeply into clinical workflows, providing context-specific recommendations and quick action shortcuts. These features streamline various administrative tasks, from scheduling to patient follow-up, thereby reducing the time and effort required for their completion. With ProvARIA handling the sorting and prioritization of messages, caregivers can allocate more time to face-to-face interactions with patients. The successful pilot of ProvARIA in several Providence clinics showcased notable improvements in message processing times and caregiver efficiency.
The impact of Microsoft AI in healthcare
Microsoft’s subsidiary Nuance uses conversational, ambient, and generative AI for its Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) Copilot solution. DAX Copilot, automatically documents patient encounters accurately and efficiently at the point of care—alleviating administrative burdens, improving clinician well-being and enhancing patient experience.
The advent of Azure OpenAI Service is providing solutions that can assist in addressing the diverse and complex needs of the global healthcare sector. From reducing administrative burdens on clinicians to enhancing the overall quality of patient care, the impact of AI in healthcare is profound and far-reaching.
Our commitment to responsible AI
At Microsoft, we are guided by our AI principles and Responsible AI Standard along with decades of research on AI, grounding, and privacy-preserving machine learning. A multidisciplinary team of researchers, engineers and policy experts reviews our AI systems for potential harms and mitigations — refining training data, filtering to limit harmful content, query and result-blocking sensitive topics, and applying Microsoft technologies like Azure AIContent Safety, InterpretML and Fairlearn. We make it clear how the system makes decisions by noting limitations, linking to sources, and prompting users to review, fact-check and adjust content based on subject-matter expertise.