In right now’s quickly evolving healthcare panorama, digital transformation is not a luxurious however a necessity. Some of the important elements of this transformation is the digital well being report (EHR) system, which performs a pivotal position in healthcare operations and care supply. Organizations are actively exploring alternate options for his or her conventional on-premises infrastructures to beat vital challenges, together with excessive capital expenditure, frequent costly {hardware} refresh cycles, outdated safety protocols, and most significantly, managing the information net of siloed programs. By leveraging linked EHR programs within the cloud, suppliers may also unlock the total potential of their knowledge and additional ship data-driven AI improvements.
Azure for mission-critical workloads
Migrating EHR programs to Microsoft Azure supplies healthcare organizations with a sturdy platform for mission-critical workloads, guaranteeing optimized efficiency, quick knowledge entry, built-in catastrophe restoration, and enhanced safety features, equivalent to AI-powered menace detection and automatic compliance monitoring. On prime of that, Azure maximizes cloud investments, providing new prospects to harness knowledge to springboard AI improvements.
Information is on the coronary heart of healthcare. Hospitals produce greater than 50 petabytes of information throughout greater than 10 siloed programs yearly. Because the healthcare trade faces the twin challenges of managing huge quantities of unstructured knowledge and a scarcity of workforce, as much as 97% of healthcare knowledge goes unused, highlighting a big missed alternative for operational excellence and higher affected person insights.1 One of many largest advantages for healthcare prospects on Azure is the power to unify their multi-modal healthcare knowledge for analytics and AI with healthcare knowledge options in Microsoft Material that lets them ingest, retailer, and analyze knowledge from varied sources and modalities. Whereas Material unifies your knowledge, Microsoft Purview delivers the information governance service that helps you classify the information throughout your knowledge property, together with identification for delicate knowledge. Integrating Microsoft Purview with healthcare knowledge options in Material not solely strengthens safety but additionally allow you to guarantee compliance, enabling healthcare organizations to manipulate their knowledge with confidence. We’re aware of the trade expectations during which our expertise is utilized, and this is among the many the reason why our healthcare prospects belief Azure for mission-critical workloads.
As we proceed to ship knowledge improvements, we see our prospects use their linked knowledge on a large spectrum of AI capabilities. With Azure AI, healthcare organizations can speed up innovation by way of predictive analytics, automate scientific duties, and enhance affected person interactions with the assistance of ambient AI options like DAX Copilot (straight embedded in EHR programs), in addition to make the most of Microsoft healthcare AI fashions in Azure AI Foundry and GitHub, a group of cutting-edge multi-modal generative AI fashions that profit imaging and radiology workflows.
Enhanced help for mission-critical
Mission-critical workloads demand complete help. In 2024, Microsoft Unified enhanced its help for mission-critical workloads in healthcare by way of its Mission Essential Choices. This initiative supplies proactive help to enhance the well being, resiliency, and efficiency of healthcare programs through common assessments, steerage, and optimization suggestions, guaranteeing enterprise continuity and addressing distinctive healthcare challenges.
Collaborating for expertise excellence: A strategic partnership that stands out
Our dedication to mission-critical is mirrored in our collaborations with main EHR suppliers equivalent to Epic®. This long-standing relationship of greater than 20 years has yielded an optimized resolution for Epic® on Azure, providing a sturdy, purpose-built platform backed by joint-reference structure. Just lately, Microsoft introduced expanded scalability on Azure for healthcare organizations, particularly for operating Epic®’s Chronicles* Operational Database (ODB), rising its capability to 65 million world references per second (GRefs/s), a 171% enhancement from 2023 on the new Mbv3 VM collection.
The collaboration with Epic® extends effectively past the cloud infrastructure—to a number of merchandise and capabilities a part of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. Epic® and Microsoft have expanded their collaboration to combine superior AI applied sciences equivalent to Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and the DAX Copilot into Epic®’s EHR system. The combination helps present AI-powered scientific insights, streamline administrative processes, and enhance clinician productiveness by way of options like notice summarization and automatic coding options.
Delivering worth past infrastructure: The Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare promise
Microsoft’s well-rounded partnership with Epic® is among the many the reason why Azure is the cloud of selection for a lot of of our healthcare prospects.
The choice to maneuver mission-critical workloads to the cloud is commonly not nearly infrastructure. Prospects like Mercy selected Azure to not solely modernize their infrastructure but additionally extract worth from sizeable knowledge archives. Mercy’s digital transformation on Azure enabled it to attach beforehand siloed knowledge and use a number of Microsoft providers equivalent to Azure Information Lake to lead to constructive enterprise outcomes. For instance, by empowering care groups with good dashboards and insights into components that decide affected person discharge, Mercy has been in a position to cut back affected person keep durations considerably. Mercy employs Azure AI Doc Intelligence to scan and acknowledge data on affected person’s insurance coverage playing cards which then will get up to date on their EHR information mechanically.
We acknowledge our buyer’s need to have an entire digital transformation within the cloud that transcends each layer of the stack, and Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare lets us ship to that promise. It encapsulates a broad spectrum of modern knowledge and AI improvements from Microsoft, purpose-built for the healthcare trade, enabling our prospects to realize their cloud-first targets quicker and simpler. Just lately, Microsoft introduced a number of improvements as a part of the portfolio, together with new healthcare AI fashions in Azure AI Foundry, capabilities for healthcare knowledge options in Microsoft Material, the healthcare agent service in Copilot Studio, and an AI-powered nursing workflow resolution.
As prospects understand the worth of consolidating their IT investments round a single vendor, Azure is more and more being adopted for mission-critical workloads. By seamlessly connecting and delivering worth throughout all layers of the stack, Azure for mission-critical extends a buyer’s return on cloud investments. Prospects like St. Luke’s College Well being System are reaping the advantages of their Epic® on Azure migration by benefiting from a number of synergies within the Microsoft portfolio, just like the interoperability of Microsoft Groups with Epic®. Safety is of paramount significance when coping with affected person information, and prospects like Jefferson Well being migrate their Epic® environments to Azure with excessive confidence with Microsoft Defender for end-point detection and response.
Subsequent steps
As we proceed to rework mission-critical workloads within the cloud, we’re making it simpler for our companions and prospects to create linked experiences at each level of care, empower their healthcare workforce, and unlock the worth from their knowledge, all with uncompromised privateness and safety. Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare is supporting healthcare organizations on each step of their journey towards shaping a more healthy future.
*Epic® and Chronicles are logos of Epic Programs Company.
1 World Financial Discussion board, 4 methods knowledge is enhancing healthcare, December 2019.
