Microsoft Launches New Healthcare Division

Microsoft has been working on healthcare innovation with AI and cloud computing for years with their initiative Healthcare NExT (New Experiences and Technologies). Now, the company has decided to take its efforts a step further by creating their new Microsoft Healthcare team. The company has recruited industry veterans Jim Weinstein and Joshua Mandel to be the teams new Vice President and Chief Architect, respectively.

I’m *so excited* to welcome Jim Weinstein and Joshua Mandel to the #MicrosoftHealthcare team. These brilliant, ambitious, and practical visionaries are inspiring open standards and data-driven innovation in healthcare. https://t.co/cMLeJjcleq

— Peter Lee (@peteratmsr) June 26, 2018

Weinstein, former CEO and president of Dartmouth-Hitchcock and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health system has been appointed to be Microsoft Healthcare’s Head of Innovation and Health Equity. He will be working with corporate vice president Peter Lee in developing the overall strategic vision for Microsoft Healthcare. He has advised three administrations on healthcare policy and was described by Microsoft Healthcare’s corporate vice president Peter Lee as, “A widely respected visionary, author, surgeon and leader in the future of healthcare delivery.”

Mandel is a software architect and physician who previously led the health IT department at Verily, Google’s healthcare research organization. He will be using his expertise in technology to craft the cloud architecture for Microsoft Healthcare that will aim to “unlock the value of healthcare for the entire health ecosystem”. Mandel is also a lead architect for Health IT at the Boston Children’s Hospital and a visiting scientist at Harvard Medical School.

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The team sees the current patient record system as a “health data funnel” in which healthcare data is not easily accessible to physicians and researchers and plans to use their cloud software, such as kDrive, to replace this current structure. Microsoft currently has a blueprint established for bringing medical health records to the cloud in an effective and private manner but plans to move towards creating an open architecture that fuels research initiative and facilitates patient-physician interaction.

“We have our work cut out for us but know that we have the right team in place.”

Sources: Windows Central, Microsoft