Chris Bishop discusses Microsoft Research healthcare initiative Healthcare NExT

So artificial intelligence is clearly going to transform every aspect of our lives
But as Eric has already highlighted, one of the most significant could turn out to be healthcare
and now we call know that the healthcare systems in the UK and indeed around the world
are under tremendous financial pressures
And those pressures are going to get worse, we’re all, thankfully, we’re all living longer.
But we’re no longer dying of diseases we’re often living with those diseases
for long periods of time, diseases like cancer, or dementia or diabetes
And as we live longer and as we learn to manage some of the diseases
rather than die of those diseases, those pressures on the healthcare system are only going more and more intense.
On the other hand it’s also a time of tremendous opportunity, the development of the secure and trusted cloud
along with artificial intelligence, I believe positions us on the brink of what potentially
is a major revolution in healthcare, driven by artificial intelligence.
So, in order that we at Microsoft can participate and help drive that revolution, earlier this year we made an announcement
of a new initiative called Healthcare Next.
So Healthcare Next aims at driving this profound transformation of healthcare,
through very much a partnership model.
So this is the first of the partnerships that we’ve announced. This is with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre,
This is one of the largest delivery networks of healthcare in the United States
and UPMC and Microsoft have a shared vision that we can use artificial intelligence to empower clinicians.
It’s a rather sad fact that today many primary care physicians spend something like
a third of their time working with the IT entering information into
electronic medical records when really they should be spending time talking to the patient
and thinking about the patients care pathway.
But we believe that artificial intelligence can empower those clinicians and free up some of their time.
So they can focus much more on patients instead of battling with out of date information technology.