Microsoft Announces They Will Be Developing an AI-Powered Healthcare Team

Microsoft is working towards a number of health-related initiatives, but one of the most exciting is their endeavor to put together a new Microsoft Healthcare team. This, however, doesn’t mean that they’ll be scanning through your computer looking for viruses. The Microsoft Healthcare team will be creating a cloud-based database that is comprised of patient profiles that can be accessed anywhere in the world, and be able to utilize artificial intelligence to analyze and treat symptoms.

The software giant hired two important people to help make this project a reality. Jim Weinstein, the now Head of Innovation and Health Equity will focus on creating health systems that will be used and accessed via the cloud. Joshua Mandel, the Chief Architect for the group will be working on the overall architecture that the systems will use to operate.

The Healthcare team is Microsoft’s next step to moving healthcare data to the cloud in a way that maintains a strict compliance with confidentiality and security. One of the main reasons we haven’t seen a mainstream cloud-based healthcare system is due to the fact that there are major security concerns regarding the privacy of peoples’ personal health data.

Analysts predict that utilizing AI in healthcare will experience exponential growth over the next decade and generate massive savings for the US healthcare economy. Microsoft is hoping to be at the forefront of this digital renaissance in healthcare in the coming years.

They are however not the only company competing for a slice of this growing industry. Google is another company hoping to implement their advanced AI technology by helping analyze patients at hospitals and help better understand how diseases are spread and how we can work smarter to stop them. Apple is also making headway into developing AI-powered healthcare projects, including filing over 54 patents that will turn an iPhone into a powerful medical device that can monitor biometric data, blood pressure, and even predict abnormal heart rates.