Will Microsoft design the blueprints for the future of digitally-facilitated healthcare? The answer seems likely — but for once, the tech company won’t be able to accomplish its lofty goals alone.

1. What the Microsoft/Humana Deal
Tells Us About the Healthcare Market
By Matt Doyle

2. Will Microsoft design the blueprints for the future of
digitally-facilitated healthcare? The answer seems likely —
but for once, the tech company won’t be able to accomplish its
lofty goals alone.
At the close of October, Microsoft and the health insurance
giant Humana forged a strategic partnership. Over the next
seven years, the partners will adapt Microsoft’s cutting-edge
AI, cloud, and collaboration tools to the healthcare sector’s
needs. Ultimately, they hope that the products they design
will improve health outcomes and make care experiences
more intuitive for patients.
As one representative for Microsoft writes in a press release,
“Using the power of Microsoft’s Azure cloud, Azure AI, and
Microsoft 365 collaboration technologies, as well as
interoperability standards like FHIR®, Humana will develop
predictive solutions and intelligent automation to improve its
members’ care by providing care teams with real-time access
to information through a secure and trusted cloud platform.”

3. It’s an ambitious goal, to be sure, but the collaboration reflects more than ambition alone. Humana’s partnership with
Microsoft also reflects a race against the clock — and a real concern that the digitally-facilitated solutions we have
today won’t pass muster soon.
The Humana-Microsoft deal comes at the cusp of a Baby Boomer retirement flood. Pew Research estimates that by
2030, a full 18% of the American population will be 65 or older. Humana, which implements and offers a variety of
Medicare Advantage plans, will soon be partly responsible for managing the influx of seniors as they seek out
healthcare. If the system is inefficient, Humana may find itself struggling to provide the resources that its older
enrollees require.
Dr. Greg Moore, corporate vice president of health technology and alliances at Microsoft, sees the matter in another
light. In a recent article, Moore commented: “With an estimated 10,000 people joining the Medicare system daily, we
have a tremendous opportunity to address the growing demands on the health care system by improving health
outcomes and lowering costs.”
Microsoft and Humana’s work is for Humana’s benefit, yes — but it also serves the American health sector as a whole.
If the pair can find a way to link Microsoft’s cutting-edge tools into a cohesive foundation for digitally-facilitated care,
they may be able to not only handle the Boomer wave, but also provide a new vision for the future of tech-supported
healthcare.

4. The healthcare sector is in dire need of such cohesion. Consider the role that
fax machines — a technology ostensibly outmoded in the 2000s — still plays in
doctors’ offices today. Providers use the clunky tools to securely transmit
patient health data between hospitals and health systems because their
comparably advanced EHR systems are not interoperable.
This small administrative inefficiency is one example among many. When
stacked, they pose a significant drain on providers’ time, resources, and ability
to be productive at work. According to one 2017 study published in Academic
Medicine, administrative work burdens can have a significant impact on a
physician’s ability to deliver high-quality care, feel satisfied in their career, and
work without burning out.
Patients and providers alike require better support from their digital tools. The
Microsoft/Humana collaboration may be vital to delivering a cohesive suite of
solutions that can provide that support — if, of course, the pair can deliver on
their intentions.

5. Microsoft and Humana will work to achieve several goals
over the next seven years. For one, they will work to adapt
Microsoft Teams into an interoperable system for
coordinating patient care. Humana employees will be able
to securely access, manage, and share patient information
as needed, as well as communicate via voice or chat with
health care providers and payers to improve patient
experiences. The partners will also adapt Microsoft’s
natural language processing systems to health care
administrators’ needs. They hope that by doing so, they
will be able to optimize administrative and clinical
workflows.
Then, of course, is the most-publicized and perhaps most
apparent goal: to improve care for Humana’s enrollees.
The tools that Microsoft offers, the company writes, will
“empower doctors to deliver personalized, proactive
health care by providing a holistic view of their patients,
ensuring preventive care, keeping up with medication
schedules and refills, and offering perspective on social
barriers to health, such as food insecurity, loneliness, and
social isolation.”

6. The potential for positive change is enormous.
However, we need to look at the collaborator’s plan not as a stop-gap measure that
allows Humana to handle an influx of seniors, but as a potential blueprint for how all
health systems will approach patient care in the future. If this deal goes well, it seems
reasonable to posit that the unified, cohesive approach that the pair promise will
become the baseline — and the expectation — for all health systems as we move
forward.

7. Thanks for reading!
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