Microsoft, Google and Amazon are partnering with healthcare startups and companies to develop, integrate and scale generative AI technology with the aim of reducing clinicians time spent on repetitive tasks, CNBC reported April 21.
Microsoft
David Rhew, MD, global chief medical officer at Microsoft said generative AI could be the technology that solves healthcare's biggest challenges, but that companies developing these tools for the healthcare industry have to do it carefully.
Dr. Rhew said the first steps in doing so is to start with "high-impact, low-risk" uses such as automating clinicians administrative tasks.
This is why the company is expanding its partnership with EHR vendor Epic Systems.
Epic and Microsoft are using generative AI technology to draft responses to messages physicians receive from patients through MyChart.
Peter Lee, corporate vice president of research and incubations at Microsoft, said Epic's first AI developments excited him and brought tears to his eyes.
So far, UC San Diego Health, Madison Wis.-based UW Health, and Palo Alto, Calif.-based Stanford Health Care are the only health systems to begin piloting the MyChart draft response tool.
Amazon
Amazon Web Services is also integrating generative AI into healthcare imaging.
Under a new partnership with Philps, Amazon will help move Philips HealthSuite Imaging to Amazon's cloud platform.
With the move and AI added to imaging, the companies aim to speed up diagnosis and treatment for radiologists and other clinicians, as well as improve patient outcomes, and reduce medical imaging costs.
Amazon is also teaming up with 3M Health Information Systems to help scale 3M's ambient clinical documentation and virtual assistant tools.
Under the partnership, the two companies will work to enhance 3M's conversational AI platform, so that it can be integrated directly into clinicians' workflows. In addition, Amazon Web Services will integrate its machine learning services into 3M's cloud-based clinical intelligence tool to help it document clinicians' interactions with patients.
Amazon and 3M said the partnership will make it easier for physicians to automate clinical notes within a patient's EHR.
Google Cloud launched a new artificial intelligence-powered claims acceleration suite designed to accelerate the prior authorization process.
Currently, the prior authorization process is estimated to take about an average of 10 days, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Google's new suite aims to automate that process for providers by using AI to make sense of unstructured data that appears in images, PDFs and health records.
Blue Shield of California is one of the first health insurers to use the suite.