Ohio State University and Microsoft have signed a five-year partnership that will move as much as 80% of the university’s storage and computing to Microsoft’s Azure cloud and expand the use of artificial intelligence at its Wexner Medical Center. Microsoft announced the deal Tuesday. Neither side disclosed financial terms.
What Will Ohio State Move to Microsoft Azure?
The biggest change is infrastructure. Ohio State plans to shift 70% to 80% of its storage and computing to Azure, including pathology and medical imaging. The university will also keep a backup of its electronic health records on Azure, so staff can still reach them if the school’s own systems fail.
How Is Ohio State Already Using AI in Patient Care?
Doctors at the medical center already use Microsoft’s Dragon Copilot to draft notes from patient visits. Clinicians then check and sign off on those notes. The technology still has limits. Such AI scribes can make serious errors, as NHS records showed earlier this year.
Other projects are at earlier stages. Two Ohio State buildings run a “smart hospital” system that links building systems with clinical equipment to save energy. A shared data platform meant to forecast needs such as surgery demand and staffing is still in the design stage. An AI tool for reviewing cancer cases is only being explored.
John J. Warner, the medical center’s chief executive, framed the partnership in broad terms. “Artificial intelligence represents one of the most significant opportunities to transform and improve how hospitals care for patients,” he said.
The agreement lands in a crowded market. Big tech companies are racing to sell AI to health systems. NHS England is rolling out Microsoft’s Copilot to 505,000 staff. Google Cloud launched Gemini for healthcare on the same day as the Ohio State announcement, and Amazon’s AWS unveiled a $100 million health program.
This article was written with the assistance of AI.
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