logo

Why trust is the essential ingredient in healthcare digital transformation.

Veronica Jagher

Veronica Jagher

Health Market Director, Microsoft Western Europe

Read Time, 5 min.

My phone had scarcely stopped ringing for weeks. Now it was ringing again.

“Veronica,” said the voice at the other end, “we have an idea!”

Immediately, I recognized who it was. I’ve known Carlo Tacchetti for almost as long as I’ve been at Microsoft. He’s a professor at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University and the Director of the Experimental Imaging Center at IRCCS San Raffaele – one of the most important hospitals in Milan.

This was the spring of 2020, when Covid-19 was tightening its grip on Italy. Neither I nor anyone else on my team had time to eat lunch or do anything except work. While our inboxes were creaking under the weight of incoming emails.

At that time, clinicians were finding it difficult to identify the most vulnerable patients among those with milder coronavirus symptoms. So, they had no choice but to keep everybody in hospital – which meant they swiftly ran out of ICU beds.

Carlo explained that he and his colleague Antonio Esposito, another professor at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University and the Deputy Director of the Experimental Imaging Center, had thought of a way to tackle this problem. Their idea was to use Microsoft cloud and AI technology to create an algorithm which could calculate each patient’s risk level. It would analyze diagnostic images, clinical and laboratory parameters, inflammatory status and genetic profiles. Then, in theory, the algorithm would be able to quickly predict whether a patient would need to be sent to ICU or allowed to recover at home.

“Will you help us?” asked Carlo.

Of course we would. As soon as I’d put the phone down, I contacted two colleagues, and together we began trying to make it happen. And the result is AI-SCoRE – a collaboration between IRCCS San Raffaele and Microsoft, plus the team of partners we assembled, including NVIDIA, Porini and Orobix,  aiming to help doctors quickly and precisely identify people more at-risk from Covid-19 – and with total respect for patient privacy.

Now Carlo, who has an oncology background, and I are thinking about how we can take it further. We’d like to create similar algorithms to help treat cancer patients. Especially when it comes to pinpointing those likely to relapse – so he can be extra vigilant with them and take preventative measures.

Trust comes from having a shared purpose

I think part of the reason Carlo picked up the phone and called me is the fact we share a sense of purpose. Digital transformation in healthcare is more than just a professional interest for me and my team. Just like Carlo, we believe it’s a fundamental right for all citizens to have access to equitable healthcare. And a huge part of that comes down to improving its quality – making it more effective, efficient and sustainable with digital technology, while always placing patient confidentiality and data protection at the centre.

That outlook certainly isn’t unique to my team. The same goes for our partners and for Microsoft as a whole – with its mission ‘to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.’ That sense of purpose is the seed from which trust can grow.

With that trust, coupled with the confidence that comes from Microsoft’s security, privacy and compliance capabilities, health organisations can move much faster when necessary. And one example of this springs to mind – it involves Finland’s largest healthcare organization: HUS.

HUS is one of our established customers. Together, we’d been implementing new digital tools for several years, with Microsoft cloud services and Microsoft 365 already in place. As social distancing measures came into force in 2020, both patients and doctors needed to change how they interact. So HUS quickly scaled-up Microsoft Teams from 5,000 users to its entire workforce of 29,000 people.

In a programme that would have required slow and incremental change, HUS was able to shift to virtual consultations, remote working, online collaboration and digital scheduling – almost overnight. And it did so with total confidence that its data would be protected in the strongest possible ways.

The HUS neurosurgery clinic has started using Teams to share scans securely and make faster treatment decisions. It’s even considering placing a tablet beside each bed in all of its 23 hospitals, so that staff can speak to in-patients quickly without having to enter the room and risk spreading infections.

If HUS hadn’t fully trusted Microsoft – trusted our platform, data protection, privacy, security and compliance – such rapid and positive change would have been unthinkable.

Partnerships built on privacy, security and compliance

As I’ve described, I believe trust begins with individuals. But given the increasing complexity of the world we live in, Microsoft itself plays a huge role too. When customers partner with us, they benefit from world-leading intelligent security, integrated across our whole portfolio of solutions. They benefit from machine learning and automation, deployed to tackle cyberthreats, plus  a whole suite of innovations across compliance, privacy, transparency, legal protection and GDPR.

Hospitals and healthcare organizations are still chiefly run by physicians who may not always be experts in digital technology.  That’s one reason initiatives like the Microsoft AI Business School for Healthcare are so helpful. But more importantly, it’s the reason we need to continue demonstrating that Microsoft’s platform and solutions come with built-in trust.

Brad Smith has been at the vanguard of this. Look at projects like ‘AI for good’ which promotes ethical use of artificial intelligence. Or the fact we’ve made our threat notification service, AccountGuard, available to healthcare and human rights organizations working on Covid-19. We’ve even launched an initiative to help 25 million people across the world acquire the digital skills they need in a Covid-19 economy. All these efforts epitomize Microsoft’s commitment to making technology both trustworthy and a positive force in the world.

And yet, we still acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers, all of the time. The world keeps on changing. So the Microsoft approach is to never get complacent and commit to continuous learning.

Trust will make us more resilient   

Looking to the future, I know organizations are eager to address the wider problems facing the sector. In Europe, some authorities haven’t invested in healthcare infrastructure as they perhaps should have. We’re facing ageing populations, chronic diseases and a lack of interoperable data. Nevertheless, stories like that of IRCCS San Raffaele in Milan and HUS in Finland show that with collaboration between organizations and partnerships based on trust – we’ll be able to rise and meet whatever challenges lie ahead.

 

Free eBook: Five Tactics for Improving Security and Compliance in Healthcare

Find out how to stay compliant with data security requirements as your organisation embraces technologies like Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things.

Discover more related articles per industry:

Education

  • a woman using a laptop

    Make remote learning work better for everyone. Find out how.

    Since the COVID-19 outbreak first hit China, our education customers in the country have done amazing things to keep students engaged while they transition to remote learning. From eLearning innovations, to keeping students’ spirits high with photo and cooking challenges – teachers and students have shown extraordinary resilience during this difficult time. Now, as the […]

  • a person sitting at a table using a laptop computer

    Reimagining education: From remote to hybrid learning

    The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a torrent of individual and small-group responses as to how education could be transformed. We have found a groundswell of interest in the question, “How best to take advantage of the new opportunities arising from the disruption?” What people desperately need are opportunities to team up and find pathways of […]

Government

Healthcare

Manufacturing

  • a woman smiling for the camera

    Etex Group: Future-proofing employees to work anywhere across the world

    When COVID-19 spread across Europe in early 2020, businesses entered a new digitally-dependent age. Social distancing measures had asked offices of all shapes and sizes to close their doors, sparking organizations to quickly find other virtual ways for colleagues to meet and collaborate remotely. But for Belgium building material specialist Etex, this was a step they were ready for – having already implemented a cloud-based infrastructure and collaboration tools […]

  • a person sitting at a desk with a laptop on a table

    My people leadership compass in times of gloom

    Microsoft’s Max Tchapeyou offers a very personal viewpoint, citing the six ways he’s found to work more effectively – and positively – with his team.

Retail

  • HeadBrands is ready for the future with Microsoft 365 Business

    HeadBrands is ready for the future with Microsoft 365 Business

    Since its creation in 2010, HeadBrands has continued to grow, rapidly becoming the leading retailer of hairdressing products in Scandinavia. HeadBrands needed a modern IT solution to increase its business productivity and improve collaboration, both within the company and externally. Its response to this challenge was to replace most of its previous services with Microsoft […]

  • Picture from the back of a person attending a Teams meeting with 2 colleagues, discussing about a furniture fabric.

    Zuiver: Supporting both business and culture through technology

    “Since moving to the cloud, there are no limitations anymore. And I’m certain without this technology, we would not have seen the growth we have today.” Jaap Landsaat, CFO and Head of IT at Dutch furniture designer Zuiver, is talking about the profound impact technology has had on the business he co-founded more than 20 years ago. “Back then, we had 100 orders a week […]

Discover more related articles per dossier:

Customer Stories

  • A smiling man wearing glasses looking at the camera

    HUS: sharing data securely to make life-saving decisions

    Illnesses and diseases don’t often play fair – an unfortunate truth that was proved by the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, heavily hitting healthcare organizations with challenges the world hadn’t seen in a century. Hospitals needed a rapid response to reduce spreading the virus without affecting patient care. A high-pressure situation for any institution, but […]

Digital Transformation

Security & Privacy

  • Peace of mind when it comes to privacy and security

    Peace of mind when it comes to privacy and security

    “Safely stored in the cloud, compliant and protected by best-in-class security: your data, and the tools you use to harness it, can truly empower your business.” The world is inherently more dangerous than it has ever been, and the cyber threats we face are becoming more sophisticated. Today, any device is a potential route into […]

Tips