Humana and Microsoft Announce Multiyear Strategic Partnership

Humana and Microsoft Corp. announced a strategic partnershipfocused on building modern health care solutions for Humana members aimed atimproving their health outcomes and making their health care experiencessimpler to navigate. Using the power of Microsoft’s Azure cloud, Azure AI, andMicrosoft 365 collaboration technologies, as well as interoperability standardslike FHIR, Humana will develop predictive solutions and intelligent automationto improve its members’ care by providing care teams with real-time access toinformation through a secure and trusted cloud platform.

Humana will empower doctors to deliver personalized,proactive health care by providing a holistic view of their patients, ensuringpreventive care, keeping up with medication schedules and refills, and offeringperspective on social barriers to health, such as food insecurity, lonelinessand social isolation. In addition, Humana will leverage Microsoft technologiesfor health care-tuned natural language understanding and speech recognition toimprove administrative and clinical workflows to make health care easier formembers and clinician partners.

As a first step in the seven-year partnership with Microsoftas Humana’s preferred cloud provider, Humana will modernize its technologyplatforms and aggregate data on Microsoft Azure, enabling a longitudinal viewof its members’ health histories, to facilitate Humana’s members and their careteams having complete health records when and where they need it.

“Achieving our goal to provide better care experiences and improveour members’ health requires strong partnerships that allow us to be smarter,safer and faster in delivering care,” said Heather Cox, chief of Digital Health& Analytics at Humana. “The technologies to empower our members to getahead of their health issues and equip doctors with information exist today.Our partnership with Microsoft gives us a secure space and modern platforms toput these technologies to work for patients and their trusted providers.”

Humana will also enable efficiencies by standardizingproductivity and collaboration tools for its 41,600 employees on Microsoft 365.For example, Microsoft Teams enables health care professionals to use a securehub for coordinating patient care. Humana employees can use Microsoft Teams toassist members, to centrally manage and securely share patient interactionhistory and files, and to communicate by chat and voice with care team membersand health plan administrators to improve quality of care.

“With an estimated 10,000 people joining the Medicare systemdaily, we have a tremendous opportunity to address the growing demands on thehealth care system by improving health outcomes and lowering costs,” said GregMoore, M.D., Ph.D., corporate vice president of Health Technology and Alliancesat Microsoft. “We’re excited to combine Humana’s industry expertise withMicrosoft’s Azure cloud, Azure AI and voice capabilities to remove barriers,promote health care data interoperability, and create solutions to ensure thisgrowing population gets the right preventative, acute and long-term care forthe best health outcomes.”

Beyond enhancing Humana’s technology platforms, thispartnership will also address two core innovation areas. Humana will leverageMicrosoft Azure and Azure AI to develop on-demand and virtual medical services.In addition, Humana will deliver a more integrated health care experienceacross all touchpoints with Azure AI and voice capabilities to personalizepatient care.

“The next step for medical records is to go beyond thecollection of information to the delivery of insights,” said William Shrank,M.D., chief medical and corporate affairs officer at Humana. “Microsofttechnologies offer Humana the ability to apply sophisticated analytics to ourmembers’ records and, in turn, provide clinicians and care teams with theopportunities to make a difference in patients’ health.”

With Azure AI, Humana will be able to instantly translatethe different languages of an individual’s electronic health record anddecipher nonelectronic parts, such as socio-economic determinants of health,and store them alongside the rest of the patient’s information. With thistechnology, Humana will develop health care-specific clinical intelligencecapabilities, such as equipping home health solutions with voice technologiesthat enable care workers to be more productive and will allow Humana toproactively capture and address important barriers to health.

As part of the strategic partnership, the companies havecommitted to a multiyear research and development (R&D) investment to buildnew insights and advance Humana’s focus on value-based care. This investmentwill include direct funding, dedicated R&D teams and specific co-developedprojects. The companies will also explore the building of next-generation healthcare experiences to transform the industry and care delivery.