Humana, Microsoft Collaborate to Improve Digital Health Services

In a strategic 7-year partnership, Humana and Microsoft recently announced their goals to build modern health care solutions for members, addressing the rise in enrolled Medicare members, and making digital health care solutions that are intuitive and easy to use.

Utilizing Microsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI) cloud, Azure AI and Microsoft 365 collaboration technologies, Humana said it will be “developing predictive solutions and intelligent automation to improve its members’ care by providing care teams with real-time access to information.”

The AI cloud platform provides an opportunity for providers to view patients more holistically, boosting preventive care and adherence by using the technology. Humana explained in a press release the plan to use “Microsoft technologies for health care-tuned natural language understanding and speech recognition to improve administrative and clinical workflows to make health care easier for members and clinician partners.”

“With an estimated 10,000 people joining the Medicare system daily, we have a tremendous opportunity to address the growing demands on the health care system by improving health outcomes and lowering costs,” said Greg Moore, MD, PhD, corporate vice president of Health Technology and Alliances at Microsoft.

Dr Moore emphasized that this partnership will allow the technology company “to combine Humana’s industry expertise with Microsoft’s Azure cloud, Azure AI and voice capabilities to remove barriers, promote health care data interoperability, and create solutions,” improving care for the increasing number of people enrolling in Medicare.

As part of the 7-year partnership plan, Humana will be modernizing its technology, using Microsoft Azure to aggregate all patient data—creating a single space for patients to access their information.

“The next step for medical records is to go beyond the collection of information to the delivery of insights,” said William H Shrank, MD, MSHS, chief medical and corporate affairs officer at Humana.

The press release states, “With Azure AI, Humana will be able to instantly translate the many different languages of an individual’s electronic health record and decipher nonelectronic parts, such as socioeconomic determinants of health, and store them alongside the rest of the patient’s information.”

 “Microsoft technologies offer Humana the ability to apply sophisticated analytics to our members’ records and, in turn, provide clinicians and care teams with the opportunities to make a difference in patients’ health.” said Dr Shrank.—Edan Stanley