REDMOND,
Wash., and VERONA,
Wis., April 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsoft
Corp. and Epic on Monday announced they are expanding their
long-standing strategic collaboration to develop and integrate
generative AI into healthcare by combining the scale and power of
Azure OpenAI Service1 with Epic's industry-leading
electronic health record (EHR) software. The collaboration expands
the long-standing partnership, which includes enabling
organizations to run Epic environments on the Microsoft Azure cloud
platform.
This co-innovation is focused on delivering a comprehensive
array of generative AI-
powered solutions integrated with Epic's EHR to increase
productivity, enhance patient care and improve
financial integrity of health systems globally. One of the initial
solutions is already underway, with UC San Diego Health, UW Health
in Madison, Wisconsin, and
Stanford Health Care among the first organizations starting to
deploy enhancements to automatically draft message responses.
"A good use of technology simplifies things related to workforce
and workflow," said
Chero Goswami, chief information officer
at UW Health. "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."
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 healthcare 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.
Leading industry experts have 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.2 Industry participants recognize that
achieving long-term financial sustainability through increased
productivity and technological efficiency is a mission-critical
strategic priority.3
"The urgent and critical challenges facing healthcare 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 healthcare
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."
When creating technologies that can change the world, Microsoft
believes organizations need to ensure that the technology is used
responsibly. Microsoft is committed to creating responsible AI by
design that is guided by a core set of principles: fairness,
reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness,
transparency, and accountability. Microsoft is putting those
principles into practice across the company to develop and deploy
AI that will have a positive
impact on society, taking a cross-company approach
through cutting-edge research, best-of-breed engineering
systems, and excellence in policy and governance.
Visit the Microsoft, Nuance and Epic booths at the 2023 HIMSS
Global Health Conference in Chicago
to learn more about new and enhanced
AI-powered solutions and areas of shared
innovation.
About Epic
Epic develops software
to help people get well, help people
stay well, and help future generations be
healthier. Visit www.epic.com/about.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) enables
digital transformation for the era of an
intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to
empower every person and every organization on the planet to
achieve more.
1 Azure and Azure OpenAI Service, including any
of its component technologies, is intended for general-purpose use
and is not intended or made available: (1) as a medical device; (2)
for the diagnosis of disease or other conditions, or in
the cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention
of a disease; or (3) as a substitute for the professional
clinical advice, opinion,
or judgment of a treating
healthcare professional. Azure and Azure OpenAI
Service has not been evaluated by the U.S. FDA or similar
regulatory agency as a medical device, and users of Azure and Azure
OpenAI Service are responsible for ensuring
the regulatory compliance of their use or
any solution they build using Azure and Azure
OpenAI
2 "National Hospital Flash Report," report by Kaufman Hall, January 2023;
"The Current State of Hospital
Finances: Fall 2022 Update," report by the American Hospital
Association, Sept. 15, 2022
3 "Health Care Has a Purpose and Productivity
Crisis," report by Boston Consulting Group, Dec. 5, 2022;
"2023 forecast: 7 immediate
and long-term priorities for hospital leaders,"
Fierce Healthcare, Dec. 21, 2022; "Positioning for
Competitive Advantage and Financial Resilience," Health Management
Academy, February 2022.
Note to editors: For more information, news and
perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center
at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and
titles were correct at time of publication but may have changed.
For additional assistance, journalists
and analysts may contact
Microsoft's Rapid Response
Team or other appropriate contacts listed
at https://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts.
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SOURCE Epic