New data and artificial intelligence products announced by Microsoft on Tuesday are intended to help health-care organizations access and utilize the mountains of data collected by doctors and hospitals.

In a recent report from Deloitte, more than 30% of all data produced worldwide comes from the health care and life sciences industry. Although that information is stored across a variety of systems and formats, leveraging it can be challenging. For instance, hospitals generate around 97% of the data they need but do not use. 

Microsoft said Tuesday at the HLTH conference in Las Vegas it has developed new health-care-specific tools in Fabric, the data and analytics platform it announced in May. Using it, organizations can standardize and access data from a variety of sources, including electronic health records, images, lab systems, medical devices, and claims systems. As a result of the new tools, Microsoft says it will be possible to eliminate the “time-consuming” process of searching through each source individually.

In addition to Northwestern Medicine, Arthur Health and SingHealth, Microsoft has been testing Fabric for health care with select customers. Fabric will be available in a preview capacity starting Tuesday.  

Despite the fact that Northwestern Medicine is still in the process of moving its data into the Fabric system, Doug King said the organization is excited about what it can accomplish. 

The consolidation of disparate data will help health systems improve care and see more patients, he said.

As technology advances and Microsoft Fabric and Azure are deployed, as well as generative AI, it is going to revolutionize the way we live. We will be able to take better care of patients as a result of it.