Microsoft launches Azure Health Data Services to unify health data and power AI in the cloud | Azure Blog and Updates

Right now, we take a large step towards making the dream of interoperability in healthcare actual. Microsoft is asserting the final availability of Azure Well being Knowledge Providers, a platform as a service (PaaS) providing designed solely to help Protected Well being Data (PHI) within the cloud. Azure Well being Knowledge Providers is a brand new means of working with unified knowledge—offering your staff with a platform to help each transactional and analytical workloads from the identical knowledge retailer and enabling cloud computing to rework how we develop and ship AI throughout the healthcare ecosystem.

Think about this state of affairs:

“Give me all of the medicines prescribed and linked house well being machine knowledge with all of the CT Scan paperwork and their related radiology reviews for any affected person older than 45 with a prognosis of osteosarcoma over the past 2 years.”

The above assertion is a standard request to well being knowledge managers. It could come from physicians, medical researchers, or knowledge scientists, however such a request in at present’s programs can usually take days and even months as well being programs have to question a number of knowledge shops that don’t converse the identical language, then extract the info information, and at last work to unify them in batches for the person. Various kinds of well being knowledge are saved in siloed codecs and databases—structured knowledge like medicines and affected person attributes in pharma or EHR databases, CT scans in DICOM format, radiology reviews as unstructured textual content, and medical machine knowledge in a separate knowledge property. By the point all the info is lastly organized to be used, the knowledge is stale. With Azure Well being Knowledge Service, queries like these will be stuffed in minutes and the info will be linked to the locations you want.

Azure Well being Knowledge Providers is the primary of its variety to unify various knowledge sorts in the identical knowledge retailer on the affected person stage as you carry it into the cloud, which suggests you may view structured, unstructured, and imaging knowledge collectively for a holistic, real-time view—in simply minutes. With the service, you may search and question throughout your knowledge utilizing a unified Quick Healthcare Interoperability Sources (FHIR®) construction and deploy a set of companies to attach it quickly to the expertise you want. Whether or not you’re mixing affected person knowledge with inhabitants well being knowledge units for AI growth and analytics, visualizing knowledge for operational efficiencies, deploying affected person engagement instruments for customized care, or querying imaging metadata alongside medical knowledge utilizing our new DICOMcast characteristic, Azure Well being Knowledge Providers work together with your current programs to boost what you’re doing at present. It’s additionally constructed on open requirements to make sure you can help new options and improvements but to return.

Watch the video under to study extra.

Speed up interoperability and innovation together with your knowledge in Azure Well being Knowledge Providers

• Supplies a set of well being knowledge APIs enabling you to securely ingest and unify PHI within the cloud and persist it inside a compliance boundary in Azure.
  
  • FHIR service for administration of medical knowledge.
  • Instruments to allow the transformation of information in HL7v2, CDA, JSON, or CSV codecs to FHIR.
  • Digital Imaging and Communications in Medication (DICOM) service for administration of imaging knowledge.
  • DICOMcast expertise extracts metadata from DICOM situations and integrates it with different medical knowledge within the FHIR retailer enabling a single quarriable dataset.
  • Streaming knowledge from MedTech units will be ingested and remodeled to FHIR, with templates to seize knowledge from Apple HealthKit, Google Match, and Fitbit.
  • Unstructured knowledge from medical notes or well being paperwork can join and map to FHIR by means of Textual content Analytics for well being structuring to FHIR for viewing in context with medical knowledge data on the affected person stage.

• Permits instruments for knowledge administration, de-identification, occasion notification, and transformation of information for downstream use. A logical workspace in Azure Well being Knowledge Providers allows you to handle your FHIR, DICOM, and MedTech companies with frequent configuration throughout companies, and integration with different Azure companies. 
• Connects your PHI knowledge to highly effective expertise within the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare ecosystem. Deep analytics and AI growth start with one click on to push PHI knowledge to Azure Synapse Analytics utilizing the Synapse Hyperlink for FHIR, the place you may ship it to Microsoft Energy BI for knowledge visualization, or to Microsoft Groups and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for operational and engagement instruments.
• Enlists belief with layered, in-depth protection and superior menace safety aligned with strict compliance requirements and regulatory necessities, together with ISO, GDPR, HITRUST CSF, and HIPAA by means of BAA protection. Azure Well being Knowledge Providers helps suppliers and payors meet the necessities of the 21st Century Cures Act and CMS Interoperability and Affected person Entry closing guidelines.
• Lowers prices within the cloud with a consumption-based pricing mannequin that provides you full transparency with a pay-only-for-what-you-use construction. Azure Well being Knowledge Providers removes infrastructure prices related to a number of accounts, solely charging for storage, API calls, transformation, and conversion as used, which suggests you may strive the service for smaller workloads and management prices as you add extra complicated workloads. In case you are simply getting began, we’ve got additionally made it developer-friendly by offering month-to-month entitlements for utilization and storage at decrease limits, so it’s straightforward to innovate and discover.

Azure Well being Knowledge Providers sits on the coronary heart of the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare as your basis for PHI knowledge within the cloud.

How did we construct Azure Well being Knowledge Providers?

We began with the affected person. Whether or not you’re working with knowledge in healthcare settings, life sciences, or medical analysis, bringing knowledge collectively in a longitudinal report is highly effective, however complicated. An excessive amount of time is spent attempting to unify knowledge, and we wished to simplify that course of so our clients might focus their growth on what issues most: enhancing the supply of medical and operational care, fueling precision medication workflows, and enabling fast collaboration and analysis innovation throughout the well being ecosystem.

We listened to our companions and clients within the well being . The muse of Azure Well being Knowledge Providers is about eradicating boundaries to working with well being knowledge. It begins with giving organizations trusted safety that means that you can apply the safety, entry, and management you want for PHI so everybody in your group can transfer sooner. Azure Well being Knowledge Providers platform permits builders to scale within the cloud rapidly, gives instruments for knowledge scientists to de-identify and export for analysis, and permits finish customers to connect with options and apps with SMART on FHIR and Microsoft Energy Platform to design and energy entrance finish options.

We constructed it for the longer term. There are a variety of methods to carry knowledge to the cloud. Moderately than simply create a platform to ‘raise and shift’ knowledge silos right into a lake, we wished a spot the place our clients might harmonize knowledge round open-source requirements like HL7 FHIR and DICOM because it got here into the cloud. Group round these open requirements accelerates downstream innovation and interoperability throughout your complete well being ecosystem. And together with your PHI knowledge in a compliant boundary within the cloud, you may help each transactional and analytical processing from the identical knowledge retailer. That’s vital as a result of well being knowledge is projected to develop at a compounded annual progress price (CAGR) of 36 % by means of 2025¹ and constructing for the way forward for healthcare means establishing your structure for effectivity and scale.

We constructed it with belief. Hundreds of builders and clients are already utilizing Azure Well being Knowledge Providers in manufacturing around the globe. It’s highly effective to see our cloud expertise bringing collectively collaboration in medical analysis, pharma, healthcare, MedTech, and life sciences. We’re honored that they selected Azure for his or her well being knowledge, and we’re much more impressed by what they’re already doing with our platform to rework the way forward for well being.

“There are a number of areas the place cloud expertise like Azure Well being Knowledge Providers might help improve healthcare. I imagine it should play a essential position between numerous programs, permitting us to take knowledge from well being data and different knowledge sources and mix it collectively in a centralized place the place it may be used to tell and ship patient-centric care. It can also allow real-time complicated deep studying – by normalizing knowledge from completely different programs in a means that permits complicated algorithmic analyses to happen by way of AI or ML—and combine research-based insights again right into a medical workflow.”—Matthew Kull, Chief Data Officer, Cleveland Clinic

“Collectively, SAS and Microsoft Azure are constructing deep expertise integrations that unlock worth by making disparate knowledge and superior analytics extra accessible to well being and life science organizations. With new capabilities such because the FHIR API inside Azure Well being Knowledge Providers, the embedded AI capabilities of SAS Well being are extra environment friendly and safe, increasing the chances of patient-centric innovation and trusted collaboration throughout the well being ecosystem.”—Gail Stephens, Vice President, Well being Care and Life Sciences, SAS

“When a healthcare firm is deciding what expertise stack they’ll depend on, the vital matters are knowledge protocols, safety and compliance, and ease-of-integration. We selected Azure as a result of it covers all of those matters after which some.”—Sunny Webb, Chief Expertise Officer, Veris Well being

“Interoperability and safe knowledge sharing are important in constructing an open ecosystem to handle the fragmentation within the affected person journey. The Digital Well being Platform is utilizing Azure because the trusted cloud and its Healthcare associated service akin to FHIR to attain the purpose of a sustainable well being system. By way of the partnership with Microsoft we’ll proceed to innovate and ship new companies to sufferers and our DHP companions by embracing Azure Well being Knowledge Providers.”—Roland Scharrer, Group Chief Knowledge and Rising Expertise Officer, AXA

“As current suppliers of medical determination help software program, Capita Healthcare Selections makes use of the Microsoft FHIR service within the Azure Well being Knowledge Providers, this allows fast alternate of information by means of Quick Healthcare Interoperability Sources (FHIR®) APIs, backed by a managed platform as a service (PaaS) providing within the cloud. This enables our Head House product to ship a Hospital at House expertise supporting clinicians to maintain sufferers at house and unlock hospital beds.”—Stuart Bailey, Product Director, Capita Healthcare Selections

“The mix of Sensoria’s distant affected person monitoring wearable expertise, behavioral suggestions enabled cell apps, and synthetic intelligence Microsoft Azure cloud software program options together with DARCO’s manufacturing, medical footwear design, and diabetic wound offloading experience will assist scale back danger of amputations and enhance folks’s lives. We’re enthusiastic about this partnership and look ahead to bringing the subsequent technology of diabetic footwear to market.”—Davide Vigano, CEO, Sensoria Well being

“ZEISS is ready to join our medical expertise to Microsoft’s cloud enabling improved medical workflows in a safe surroundings.”—Euan S. Thomson, Ph.D., President, Ophthalmic Units and Head of Digital Enterprise, ZEISS Medical Expertise

“Ksana Well being is partnering with Microsoft to digitally remodel psychological healthcare supply by means of steady, goal behavioral well being monitoring and digital interventions. Microsoft’s Cloud for Healthcare and Azure Healthcare APIs speed up our skill to ship our full resolution with industry-leading end-to-end safety, integration, AI companies and scalability.”—Tony Scripa, CFO, Ksana Well being

Do extra together with your knowledge with Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare

With Azure Well being Knowledge Providers, well being organizations can remodel their affected person expertise, uncover new insights with the ability of machine studying and AI, and handle PHI knowledge with confidence. Allow your knowledge for the way forward for healthcare innovation with Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare.

We look ahead to being your companion as you construct the way forward for well being.

¹5 Methods Huge Knowledge is Altering the Healthcare Business, Fingent Weblog.

FHIR® is the registered trademark of HL7 and is used with the permission of HL7.