In as we speak’s quickly evolving healthcare panorama, digital transformation is now not a luxurious however a necessity. One of probably the most essential parts of this transformation is the digital well being report (EHR) system, which performs a pivotal function 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to beat vital challenges, together with excessive capital expenditure, frequent costly {hardware} refresh cycles, outdated safety protocols, and most significantly, managing the info internet of siloed techniques. By leveraging linked EHR techniques within the cloud, suppliers may unlock the total potential of their knowledge and additional ship data-driven AI improvements.
Azure for mission-critical workloads
Migrating EHR techniques to Microsoft Azure supplies healthcare organizations with a strong platform for mission-critical workloads, guaranteeing optimized efficiency, quick knowledge entry, built-in catastrophe restoration, and enhanced safety features, reminiscent of AI-powered risk detection and automatic compliance monitoring. On high of that, Azure maximizes cloud investments, providing new potentialities to harness knowledge to springboard AI improvements.
Data is on the coronary heart of healthcare. Hospitals produce greater than 50 petabytes of information throughout greater than 10 siloed techniques yearly. As the healthcare business 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 the most important advantages for healthcare clients on Azure is the power to unify their multi-modal healthcare knowledge for analytics and AI with healthcare knowledge options in Microsoft Fabric that lets them ingest, retailer, and analyze knowledge from numerous sources and modalities. While Fabric unifies your knowledge, Microsoft Purview delivers the info governance service that helps you classify the info throughout your knowledge property, together with identification for delicate knowledge. Integrating Microsoft Purview with healthcare knowledge options in Fabric not solely strengthens safety but in addition enable you to guarantee compliance, enabling healthcare organizations to control their knowledge with confidence. We are aware of the business expectations during which our expertise is utilized, and this is likely one of the many the reason why our healthcare clients belief Azure for mission-critical workloads.
As we proceed to ship knowledge improvements, we see our clients use their linked knowledge on a large spectrum of AI capabilities. With Azure AI, healthcare organizations can speed up innovation by predictive analytics, automate medical duties, and enhance affected person interactions with the assistance of ambient AI options like DAX Copilot (instantly embedded in EHR techniques), in addition to reap the benefits of Microsoft healthcare AI fashions in Azure AI Foundry and GitHub, a set 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 its Mission Critical Offerings. This initiative supplies proactive help to enhance the well being, resiliency, and efficiency of healthcare techniques 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 reminiscent of Epic®. This long-standing relationship of greater than 20 years has yielded an optimized answer for Epic® on Azure, providing a strong, purpose-built platform backed by joint-reference structure. Recently, Microsoft introduced expanded scalability on Azure for healthcare organizations, particularly for operating Epic®’s Chronicles* Operational Database (ODB), rising its capability to 65 million international references per second (GRefs/s), a 171% enhancement from 2023 on the new Mbv3 VM sequence.
The collaboration with Epic® extends properly 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 reminiscent of Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and the DAX Copilot into Epic®’s EHR system. The integration helps present AI-powered medical insights, streamline administrative processes, and enhance clinician productiveness by options like be aware summarization and automatic coding ideas.
Delivering worth past infrastructure: The Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare promise
Microsoft’s well-rounded partnership with Epic® is likely one of the many the reason why Azure is the cloud of selection for a lot of of our healthcare clients.
The resolution to maneuver mission-critical workloads to the cloud is usually not nearly infrastructure. Customers like Mercy selected Azure to not solely modernize their infrastructure but in addition 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 reminiscent of Azure Data Lake to lead to constructive enterprise outcomes. For instance, by empowering care groups with sensible dashboards and insights into components that decide affected person discharge, Mercy has been in a position to scale back affected person keep durations considerably. Mercy employs Azure AI Document Intelligence to scan and acknowledge data on affected person’s insurance coverage playing cards which then will get up to date on their EHR data 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 progressive knowledge and AI improvements from Microsoft, purpose-built for the healthcare business, enabling our clients to attain their cloud-first objectives sooner and simpler. Recently, 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 Fabric, the healthcare agent service in Copilot Studio, and an AI-powered nursing workflow answer.
As clients 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. Customers like St. Luke’s University Health 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 Teams with Epic®. Security is of paramount significance when coping with affected person data, and clients like Jefferson Health migrate their Epic® environments to Azure with excessive confidence with Microsoft Defender for end-point detection and response.
Next steps
As we proceed to rework mission-critical workloads within the cloud, we’re making it simpler for our companions and clients 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 emblems of Epic Systems Corporation.
1 World Economic Forum, 4 methods knowledge is bettering healthcare, December 2019.
