Microsoft and Epic Systems are extending their long-standing strategic partnership to incorporate generative AI into healthcare by combining the size and capability of Azure OpenAI Service with Epic’s electronic health record (EHR) software. The goal of this co-innovation is to boost efficiency, improve patient care, and strengthen the financial integrity of health systems throughout the world.
By adding interactive data analysis and natural language queries to SlicerDicer, Epic’s self-service reporting platform, clinical leaders will be able to examine data in a conversational and natural manner. According to Microsoft, the addition of OpenAI’s GPT-4 has shown the potential to increase the power and accessibility of self-service reporting through SlicerDicer, making it easier for healthcare organizations to identify operational improvements, including ways to reduce costs and to find answers to questions locally and in a broader context.
With the cooperation between Microsoft and Epic Systems, businesses can deploy Epic environments on the Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure, which would make it possible to deploy improvements to automatically create message answers as part of one of the earliest solutions. UC San Diego Health, UW Health in Madison, Wisconsin, and Stanford Health Care are among the first institutions to start deploying these improvements.
According to Chero Goswami, Chief Information Officer (CIO) of UW Health, “good use of technology simplifies things related to workforce and workflow. Many providers will be more productive as a result of the integration of generative AI into some of their regular tasks, which will free them up to concentrate on the clinical responsibilities that really need it.”
As a result of severe labor shortages, rising labor costs, interruptions in the supply chain, and the consequences of inflation, a significant portion of U.S. hospitals saw negative margins by the end of 2022, stated Microsoft. Participants in the industry would understand that a mission-critical strategic objective is establishing long-term financial sustainability via enhanced productivity and technical efficiency.
Challenges Facing Healthcare Systems
Eric Boyd, Corporate Vice President, AI Platform, Microsoft, said that the “urgent and critical challenges facing healthcare systems and their providers demand a comprehensive approach combining Azure OpenAI Service with Epic’s leading technology. We have worked with healthcare companies to assist them migrate their Epic installations to Azure as part of our extended alliance, which draws on a long history of cooperation between Microsoft, Nuance, and Epic. By working together, we can empower providers to use Epic and the Microsoft Cloud to deliver significant clinical and financial outcomes.”Seth Hain, Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Epic, stated that the company's investigation of OpenAI’s GPT-4 has shown the potential to increase the power and accessibility of self-service reporting through SlicerDicer, making it easier for healthcare organizations to identify operational improvements, including ways to reduce costs and to find answers to questions locally and in a broader context.
Microsoft thinks companies need to make sure the technology is utilized properly when developing innovations that have the potential to alter the world. By following a fundamental set of values, including justice, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusivity, openness, and responsibility, Microsoft is dedicated to designing responsible AI. Through “cutting-edge research, best-in-class engineering systems, and excellence in policy and governance,” Microsoft is applying these principles throughout the organization to build and deploy AI that would have a beneficial effect on society.
In conclusion, the incorporation of Azure OpenAI Service has enabled Microsoft and Epic Systems to increase their strategic cooperation, which would ultimately benefit healthcare providers, patients, and health systems globally. The collaboration between these two companies has the potential to improve productivity, reduce costs, and enhance patient care, which are all critical objectives in today's healthcare landscape.
