Microsoft made the announcement while rolling out three new cloud offerings for financial services, manufacturing companies, and nonprofits.
Microsoft announced the first update to its Cloud for Healthcare offering Wednesday morning.
The technology company first announced its Cloud for Healthcare in October 2020 as a software offering to support provider organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Related: Microsoft is Building Software for Healthcare Workers and Hospitals
The first update will be available in April and include new features for "virtual health, remote patient monitoring, care coordination and patient self-service, and support for eight new languages."
"Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare is helping clinicians stay connected across the health system, and to their patients by offering new home health care plan management applications and remote patient monitoring features," Tom McGuiness, corporate vice president of global healthcare at Microsoft, said in a statement. "We’re providing robust functionality in dynamics 365 care management features that allow care managers to develop and follow-through on care plan activities and goals, set timeline views of the patient care plans,and improve workflow efficiency with the ability to view clinical events sequentially to discern the best next step in care, and avoid costly duplication."
Microsoft made the announcement while rolling out three new cloud offerings for financial services, manufacturing companies, and nonprofits.
Related: Humana, Microsoft to Partner on Healthcare Solutions
In a press release, Microsoft included commentary from healthcare organizations using its Cloud for Healthcare service, including Providence St. Joseph, one of the nation's largest nonprofit health systems based in Rendon, Washington.
“At Providence, our vision of health for a better world drives us to continuously innovate on behalf of our caregivers and patients. As part of our journey to simplify, modernize and innovate across our technology ecosystem, we are proud to have adopted many Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare solutions, as well as contributed to the development of key capabilities of the platform," B.J. Moore, CIO of Providence St. Joseph Health, said in a statement. "By bringing together the right technology and data at the point of care, we are empowering clinicians on the front lines. The Microsoft and Providence strategic partnership proved to be invaluable to us during this critical time for our communities and patients during the pandemic and economic crisis. The partnership has enabled remote work with Office 365 and Teams, and we are using predictive modeling leveraging Azure machine learning and AI to manage precious resources like PPE, ventilators and ICU bed utilization."
Microsoft announced its cloud update one week after LinkedIn announced that it would use its platform to connect vaccination volunteers with "paid support opportunities" in an effort to mitigate the damage of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Jack O'Brien is the Content Team Lead and Finance Editor at HealthLeaders, an HCPro brand.
Photo credit: MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA/USA - NOV 22, 2014: Microsoft corporate building in Mountain View, CA. It is a multinational company that develops and sells computer software and consumer electronics. / Editorial credit: Asif Islam / Shutterstock.com