Microsoft Corp. today launched its first vertical cloud platform for healthcare providers, bundling its Azure cloud infrastructure service with elements of Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.

The Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare will become generally available at the end of the month. The company said it will make it “faster and easier” for healthcare providers to deliver “more efficient care” while supporting features such as data security, interoperability and compliance.

The platform is said to work with both structured and unstructured data, and gives medical providers access to a wide range of cloud and artificial intelligence-based services, including AI bots for virtual consultations. The offering also makes it possible for patients to access secure medical portals so they can see their personal health data, and provides mobile tools so they can interact with their healthcare teams. Providers can offer telehealth, acute care triage, diagnosis and treatment services, and follow up on them with their customers.

“Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare helps empower teams to collaborate and share knowledge in a single secure place, with advanced messaging features including priority notifications, smart camera and message delegation,” Tom McGuinness, corporate vice president of worldwide health at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. “Health teams can use data integrated across clinical systems, applications, and electronic health records to help accelerate treatment decisions and improve patient care.”

There’s more to come too, since Microsoft said it is working with independent software vendors and system integrators to create more innovative systems and solutions for healthcare providers on top of the platform.

It’s worth noting that there’s nothing that actually appears to be new in the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare platform. Rather, it’s a bundle of what the company believes to be the most useful and interesting offerings it already provides, specifically for the healthcare industry.

Still, it’s an interesting development, as Microsoft promised during its Build 2020 event in May that it would be launching cloud platforms for several different industry verticals in the future. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s no surprise that it has chosen healthcare for its first industry vertical.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller, who was briefed on the new offering, said the value proposition for healthcare providers makes sense as they’re in desperate need of anything that can help them to achieve enterprise acceleration.

“The prebuilt and preconfigured offerings achieve this for them,” Mueller said. “Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, like all vertical cloud offerings, is new and its potential will increase substantially once it opens up to Microsoft’s partner ecosystem.”

Microsoft has long held an interest in the healthcare sector. Its original Health Services Group was created in the early 2000s, and those assets were moved in 2011 to a joint venture called Caradigm it formed with General Electric Co.’s healthcare unit. It later sold its interest in Caradigm before establishing a healthcare-focused artificial intelligence research unit, called Healthcare NexT, in 2017.

Photo: Microsoft