Microsoft Launches Its First AI Assistant for Healthcare

Microsoft Corp. recently unveiledย Microsoft Dragon Copilot, the first AI assistant for clinical workflow that brings together the trusted natural language voice dictation capabilities of DMO with the ambient listening capabilities of DAX, fine-tuned generative AI, and healthcare-adapted safeguards. Part of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, Dragon Copilot is built on a secure modern architecture that enables organizations to deliver enhanced experiences and outcomes across care settings for providers and patients alike.

Microsoft Dragon Copilot

Photo: Microsoft

In the Philippines, clinician burnout is worsened by long hours, low pay, and heavy patient loads. Microsoft Dragon Copilot could greatly benefit the healthcare industry by streamlining administrative tasks and improving care access. Its advanced AI features can alleviate documentation burdens and enhance patient care quality. Integrating Dragon Copilot could address clinician burnout and support an aging population, driving better clinical and financial outcomes.

โ€œAt Microsoft, we have long believed that AI has the incredible potential to free clinicians from much of the administrative burden in healthcare and enable them to refocus on taking care of patients,โ€ said Joe Petro, corporate vice president of Microsoft Health and Life Sciences Solutions and Platforms. โ€œWith the launch of our new Dragon Copilot, we are introducing the first unified voice AI experience to the market, drawing on our trusted, decades-long expertise that has consistently enhanced provider wellness and improved clinical and financial outcomes for provider organizations and the patients they serve.โ€

โ€œWith Dragon Copilot, weโ€™re not just enhancing how we work in the EHRโ€”weโ€™re tapping into a Microsoft-powered ecosystem where AI assistance extends across our organization, delivering a consistent and intelligent experience everywhere we work,โ€ stated Dr. R. Hal Baker, senior vice president and chief digital and chief information officer, WellSpan Health. โ€œItโ€™s this ability to enhance the patient experience while streamlining clinician workflows that make Dragon Copilot such a game-changer.โ€

Dragon Copilot combines DMOโ€™s speech capabilities, which have helped clinicians document billions of patient records, and DAXโ€™s ambient AI technology, which has assisted over 3 million ambient patient conversations across 600 healthcare organizations in the past month alone. With these ambient AI capabilities, organizations have already realized significant outcomes, with clinicians reporting five minutes saved per encounter, 70% of clinicians reporting reduced feelings of burnout and fatigue, 62% of clinicians stating they are less likely to leave their organization,ย while 93% of patients report a better overall experience.

Key features of Dragon Copilot allow clinicians and other care providers across specialties to:

  • Streamline documentation: Clinicians can take advantage of multilanguage ambient note creation, automated tasks, multilanguage support, personalized style and formatting, natural language dictation capabilities, speech memos, editing, customized texts, templates, AI prompts, and more in one singular user interface.
  • Surface information:ย The embedded AI assistant functionality allows clinicians to conduct general-purpose medical information searches from trusted content sources.
  • Automate tasks:ย New capabilities allow clinicians to automate key tasks, such as conversational orders, note and clinical evidence summaries, referral letters, and after-visit summaries, in one centralized workspace.

Clinicians working across ambulatory, inpatient, emergency departments, and other care settings will benefit from Dragon Copilotโ€™s fast, accurate, secure, and intuitive speech and ambient capabilities to document care, navigate electronic health record (EHR) workflows, and perform other administrative tasks. Dragon Copilot will be generally available in the U.S. and Canada in May, followed by the U.K., Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Microsoft is also committed to bringing a new Dragon experience to other key markets using Dragon Medical today.

โ€œWe are aware of the administrative burnout affecting our clinicians, and the need for improved care access for our patients, and the newest evolution of Dragon represents a significant step forward in alleviating this strain,โ€ shared Glen Kearns, EVP and CIO, The Ottawa Hospital. โ€œWe are thrilled to be one of the first customers in Canada to use Microsoftโ€™s ambient and generative AI technology. The newest evolution of Dragon Copilot could help alleviate documentation burden for our clinical teams.โ€

With Microsoftโ€™s extensive healthcare industry partner ecosystem, healthcare organizations can unlock more value from Dragon Copilot by accessing new solutions and integrated offerings. These partners include leading EHR providers, independent software vendors, system integrators, and cloud service providers that each play a unique role in enabling organizations to deliver meaningful outcomes using the Dragon Copilot solution.

Embracing AI innovations with a secure data estate and responsible AI

Dragonโ€™s new capabilities are built on a secure data estate and incorporate healthcare-specific clinical, chat, and compliance safeguards for accurate and safe AI outputs. They also align with Microsoftโ€™s responsible AI principles to help guide AI development and useโ€”transparency, reliability and safety, fairness, inclusiveness, accountability, privacy, and security. We remain committed to developing responsible AI by design and ensuring that these technologies positively impact both the healthcare ecosystem and broader society and will share our learnings on this journey with our customers.