Microsoft leads competition as AI chases healthcare

Microsoft’s latest move in healthcare is heating the jostle among companies developing artificial intelligence solutions to refine healthcare delivery.

In a bid to dominate the burgeoning healthcare AI market, estimated at $19 billion, Microsoft unveiled new healthcare artificial intelligence models last week, aiming to empower healthcare workers to unlock clinical and operational insights, connect care experiences and enhance team collaboration.

These include models in Azure AI Studio, healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric, the healthcare agent service in Copilot Studio, and an AI-driven nursing workflow solution.

Microsoft’s entry appears poised to intensify competition for existing AI models developed specifically for healthcare in low-resource settings like Nigeria.

These models are designed to address unique challenges such as limited data availability, infrastructure constraints, and cultural nuances.

For instance, Intron Health, a budding health-tech startup founded by Tobi Olatunji recently secured $1.6 million pre-seed funding to develop an AI-based solution for clinical speech recognition of over 200 accents spoken in developing countries.

Intron Health operates one of Africa’s largest clinical speech datasets, with over 3.5 million audio clips across multiple specialties and domains, and 288 accents from over 29 countries.

The solution is built to deliver real-time transcription of speech-to-text within hospital settings, helping healthcare providers generate electronic medical records without hassle.

However, these models may not have the same level of sophistication or scale as Microsoft’s offerings, given the tech giant’s enormous resources, technological expertise, and wide customer base, which could disrupt the existing market dynamics.

Moreso majority of African and Nigerian health-tech innovators are focused on innovations in order and inventory management solutions, online pharmacies, product protection and visibility, medical drone delivery, and data analytics.

Leading innovators in the supply chain represent a growing force in African health tech, generating annual revenues of nearly $200 million, according to Salient Advisory.

This leaves the clinical and operational space largely unexplored, providing Microsoft with a potential ready market.

Although, Microsoft has not announced plans to penetrate Africa or Nigeria yet. It has started partnerships with leading healthcare companies in the United States.

It has collaborated with Cleveland Clinic, Advocate Health, Baptist Health of Northeast Florida, Duke Health, Intermountain Health Saint Joseph Hospital, Mercy, Northwestern Medicine, Stanford Health Care, and Tampa General Hospital.

The collaboration has supported it to build an AI solution using ambient technology that addresses nursing documentation by drafting flowsheets for review, allowing nurses to focus less on paperwork and more on their patients.

Joe Petro, corporate vice president, Healthcare and Life Sciences Solutions and Platforms at Microsoft said these AI advancements are increasingly enhancing patient care and also rekindling the practice of medicine for clinicians across the broader healthcare and life sciences industry.

With the world at an inflexion point where AI breakthroughs are changing the work and living, Petro said “Microsoft’s AI-powered solutions are helping lead t:hese efforts by streamlining workflows, improving data integration, and utilising AI to deliver better outcomes for healthcare professionals, researchers and scientists, providers, medtech developers, and ultimately the patients they all serve.”

In the Azure AI model catalogue, Microsoft provides a collection of cutting-edge multimodal medical imaging foundation models.

Developed in collaboration with Providence and Paige.ai, these models enable healthcare organisations to integrate and analyse diverse data types — ranging from medical imaging to genomics and clinical records.

By using these advanced models as a foundation, healthcare organizations can build, fine-tune and deploy AI solutions tailored to their specific needs, all while minimizing the extensive compute and data requirements typically associated with building multimodal models from scratch, the tech company stated in an official statement.

Carlo Bifulco, chief medical officer of Providence Genomics stated that the development of foundational AI models in pathology and medical imaging is expected to drive significant advancements in cancer research and diagnostics.

“These models can complement human expertise by providing insights beyond traditional visual interpretation and, as we move toward a more integrated, multimodal approach, will reshape the future of medicine,” he added.

Historically, healthcare data has been difficult to access due to its unstructured nature and the limitations of existing data management systems.

These challenges have limited organisations’ ability to gain a comprehensive view of patient experiences and access valuable insights.

With the general availability of healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric, the company believes healthcare organisations can overcome these barriers by reshaping how users access, manage and act on data with a single, unified AI-powered platform.

Healthcare organizations face numerous challenges, including workforce shortages, rising costs and increasing patient care demands.

Generative AI offers a potential solution to these challenges by automating administrative tasks, analysing vast amounts of data for actionable insights and assisting healthcare professionals in decision-making.

The company also introduced a healthcare agent service in Copilot Studio for appointment scheduling, clinical trial matching, patient triaging, and more.

Organisations are expected to leverage to help create connected patient experiences, improve clinical workflows, and empower healthcare professionals while meeting industry expectations.

With the World Health Organization (WHO) predicting a shortage of 4.5 million nurses by 2030, the urgency to deliver technology to support the nursing profession is felt more than ever.