Polish startup Infermedica has announced a collaboration with tech giant Microsoft, which aims to empower healthcare organisations to build and deploy virtual healthcare assistants at scale.

The artificial intelligence (AI) health company, which specialises in early diagnosis and triage, announced in a blog post that it will provide its technology to the Microsoft Healthcare Bot service.

By conducting automated triage powered by Infermedica’s technology, the tool aims to help reduce the overload on health systems caused by the COVID-19 crisis.

The Microsoft Healthcare Bot service is used by leading health organisations, including Aurora Health Care, Premera Blue Cross and Quest Diagnostics. 

WHY IT MATTERS

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare providers have needed to streamline medical triage. The partnership aims to improve diagnostic efficiency and deliver more meaningful data while simultaneously introducing significant cost-saving measures. 

THE LARGER CONTEXT 

Infermedica was founded in 2012 by a team of engineers, data scientists, and physicians. The startup’s products have been used by more than 3.5 million users worldwide, for five million health checks, and its technology is offered as a white-label solution to health insurance companies, health systems, and hospitals.

It recently joined forces with tech company LiveChat Software to launch chatbot technology which helps identify coronavirus symptoms and provide advice to people seeking medical assistance. The chatbot is based on Infermedica’s COVID-19 assessment tool which was recognised on the World Health Organization’s list of resources to fight the pandemic.

Meanwhile, in response to the COVID-19 crisis, Spirit Digital has offered its CliniTouch Vie remote monitoring system to care homes in the UK, which connects carers and nurses with GPs, enabling them to triage patients more efficiently.  

Dutch imaging service Thirona has also developed two solutions to triage COVID-19 patients based on its existing AI software for diseases like asthma, tuberculosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

ON THE RECORD

Adam Walker, program manager at Microsoft Healthcare, said: “Infermedica is revolutionizing the triage space, with a solution that breaks the mould. We were impressed with the sophisticated probabilistic modelling used to achieve a level of accuracy that isn’t possible with the simplistic decision tree models that we saw in the rest of the market. We chose to work with Infermedica because they bring a truly intelligent layer of clinically validated health technology to the Microsoft Healthcare Bot Service, empowering our customers to build smarter virtual assistants that drive better outcomes for patients.”

Piotr Orzechowski, CEO and founder at Infermedica, said: “We’re delighted to partner with Microsoft on its Microsoft Healthcare Service Bot. We both share a commitment to build more accessible healthcare for everyone, and deliver benefits of digitisation to health systems and healthcare providers globally.”