Microsoft's Nuance Launches AI Collaborative for Health System Leaders

Nuance, a Microsoft company specializing in conversational artificial intelligence (AI), has partnered with peer-learning company The Health Management Academy (The Academy) to launch the AI Collaborative, an experiential community of health systems executives focused on advancing the use and deployment of AI in healthcare.

The growth of AI and machine learning (ML) in healthcare suggests that these technologies will continue to impact clinical decision-making, patient experience, and healthcare business strategy in the future.

Health system investment in AI solutions has increased over the years and those behind the AI Collaborative state that this investment necessitates regular touchpoints among health system executives. Members of The Academy, a leadership development community for healthcare executives, have reportedly expressed a desire for dedicated spaces to explore the potential of AI in healthcare.

The AI Collaborative will offer touchpoints to serve as an opportunity for leaders to share questions, challenges, and successes in real time.

These touchpoints will be provided in the form of AI Collaborative Summits, where stakeholders in analytics, clinical transformation, and digital strategy across health system leadership teams will meet with subject-matter experts in med-tech, life sciences, and the payer sectors. Summits will also offer workshops and other learning opportunities centered around AI’s potential as a healthcare tool.

The first of these summits will be held in September. They are set to be held annually after.

"The key to successful healthcare innovation using AI is understanding at a deep level the problems that you're trying to solve and focusing on the outcomes you want to achieve," said Peter Durlach, chief strategy officer of Nuance, in the press release. "With the combined engineering, market, and domain expertise of Nuance and Microsoft, The AI Collaborative can bring together multiple technical, business, and clinical stakeholders to prioritize deployment of solutions for clinician burnout, patient engagement, and health system financial stability while accelerating innovation in precision medicine, drug discovery, clinical decision support and other promising use cases across the entire healthcare ecosystem."

HealthITAnalytics reached out to Nuance to determine which health system leaders will be involved in the AI Collaborative, but those details are not being made public at this time.

The creation of the collaborative follows the acquisition of Nuance by Microsoft earlier this year.

Through the acquisition, Microsoft aims to enhance clinician productivity, improve the overall healthcare experience, and bolster the early detection and treatment of disease. The acquisition is also set to support organizations’ efforts to boost financial performance and improve the services offered.

Microsoft and Nuance had worked together for several years before the acquisition, partnering to develop outcomes-based AI technology and utilize cloud-based solutions to address various healthcare challenges.