Microsoft, Epic Expand Effort to Integrate AI Into Health Care

REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft Corp. and Epic on Monday are expanding their long-standing strategic collaboration to develop and integrate generative AI into health care.

According to a joint announcement from the companies, they will do so by combining the scale of Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform with Epic’s electronic health record software. 

Among other things, the stepped-up collaboration is intended to help physicians better cope with the deluge of patient messages coming through various online and telehealth portals, but have AI draft responses to many inquiries.

Researchers at Stanford Health Care, UC San Diego Health, and UW Health in Madison, Wisconsin, will be among the first to pilot the new tools.

“A good use of technology simplifies things related to workforce and workflow,” said Chero Goswami, chief information officer at UW Health, in a written statement. 

“Integrating generative AI into some of our daily workflows will increase productivity for many of our providers, allowing them to focus on the clinical duties that truly require their attention,” he said.

Another solution will bring natural language queries and interactive data analysis to SlicerDicer, Epic’s self-service reporting tool, helping clinical leaders explore data in a conversational and intuitive way.

“Our exploration 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 health care organizations to identify operational improvements, including ways to reduce costs and to find answers to questions locally and in a broader context,” said Seth Hain, senior vice president of research and development at Epic.

Industry experts have long highlighted the urgent need for health systems and hospitals to address intense pressures on costs and margins. 

Approximately half of U.S. hospitals finished 2022 with negative margins as widespread workforce shortages and increased labor expenses, as well as supply disruptions and inflationary effects, caused expenses to meaningfully outpace revenue increases.

Industry participants recognize that achieving long-term financial sustainability through increased productivity and technological efficiency is a mission-critical strategic priority.

“The urgent and critical challenges facing health care systems and their providers demand a comprehensive approach combining Azure OpenAI Service with Epic’s industry-leading technology,” said Eric Boyd, corporate vice president, AI Platform, Microsoft. 

“Our expanded partnership builds on a long history of collaboration between Microsoft, Nuance and Epic, including our work to help health care organizations migrate their Epic environments to Azure. Together we can help providers deliver significant clinical and business outcomes leveraging the power of the Microsoft Cloud and Epic,” Boyd said.

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