Dive Brief:
- Mayo Clinic is partnering with Microsoft to develop an advanced artificial intelligence model dedicated to healthcare, the major academic medical center said Tuesday.
- The deal will combine Mayo’s de-identified clinical data with Microsoft’s AI, cloud and engineering capabilities to build a so-called “frontier” model for a range of clinical reasoning and healthcare use cases, the partners said in a press release.
- The health system will own the frontier model, but Microsoft plans to make it available to other organizations through its Azure Foundry AI platform.
Dive Insight:
The model will first be deployed within Mayo’s clinical environment, where it can be tested and improved, the provider said. The model is expected to have a range of capabilities, including earlier and more accurate diagnoses and treatment planning, according to a Microsoft press release.
Microsoft and Mayo Clinic didn’t respond to questions about financial details of the partnership or when the model could be released by press time.
The partnership builds upon Mayo’s AI initiatives, a key priority for the health system. The health system creates its own models, including a recently announced AI aimed at detecting pancreatic cancer more quickly and a model geared toward early detection of liver disease.
And in 2019, the provider launched Mayo Clinic Platform, an initiative to drive healthcare innovation through the use of advanced data, AI and digital health tools. Through the platform, Mayo has rolled out an accelerator that provides health technology startups with mentorship and de-identified clinical records to develop AI products, as well as a studio that offers data to help develop and validate models.
Microsoft has also doubled down on healthcare AI. In 2022, the technology giant acquired AI documentation company Nuance Communications and has since continued to build out its clinical AI assistant. Last fall, Microsoft said it would expand the Dragon Copilot assistant to nurses.
Additionally, the company offers foundation models for imaging and AI for drug development and manufacturing. Microsoft also launched a consumer chatbot dedicated to health queries this year.
