Driving the news: Legacy enterprise companies are increasingly moving into healthcare, using AI to automate routine administrative tasks, freeing up healthcare professionals to focus more on patient care. From fax automation to medical data analysis and claims processing, tech giants like Microsoft and Oracle are changing the way medical information flows through hospitals and clinics, aiming to reduce inefficiencies and improve patient outcomes.
The bigger picture: Earlier this month, Microsoft unveiled a series of innovations for its Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare platform, aimed at improving patient care and operational efficiency.
- The new features include healthcare-specific AI models in Azure AI Studio, tools for better data management in Microsoft Fabric, and an AI-powered nursing workflow solution.
- Microsoft says the new tools will empower healthcare professionals by reducing their administrative burdens and providing real-time insights to improve patient outcomes.
Similarly, Oracle Health is tackling one of the most burdensome areas of healthcare: claims processing. Its cloud-based platform automates the data exchange between providers and payers, speeding up service approvals and claims, a process notorious for delays. The ability to handle these transactions more efficiently can significantly reduce administrative bottlenecks, ultimately benefiting patients who are often left waiting for care.
Startups in the mix: As legacy systems prove too rigid for the evolving needs of healthcare, startups are playing a pivotal role in driving innovation.
- Luma Health, for example, is focused on alleviating the workload on overburdened healthcare staff by automating communication within health systems. Its AI-powered tools streamline high call volumes, fax processing, and tasks like patient referrals and appointment scheduling, directly integrating these capabilities into electronic health records.
- Glooko Inc., with a fresh $100 million in Series F funding, is reimagining chronic condition management. Its digital platform, powered by AI, integrates data from medical devices and clinical research, enabling healthcare providers to manage conditions like diabetes more efficiently — a crucial development as chronic disease management continues to challenge healthcare systems globally.
Why it matters: AI’s impact on healthcare extends beyond convenience. At a time when staffing shortages and growing patient volumes are straining hospitals, AI technologies are helping to bridge the gap. But healthcare data is notoriously difficult to wrangle, existing across numerous systems and often still accompanied by manual data entry. The winner of the AI race, whether enterprise or startup, will likely be the first to fully solve data normalization for a unified patient experience.
