Microsoft, Mayo Clinic to develop an AI model for healthcare
What's the story
Microsoft and the Mayo Clinic have announced a strategic partnership to develop a specialized artificial intelligence (AI) model for healthcare. The move comes as millions of people are turning to AI chatbots for health advice, a trend that has been growing recently. General-purpose large language models often provide unreliable and potentially harmful information due to their training on diverse internet content. Here's where Microsoft comes into play.
Training focus
AI model to be trained on medical data
The new AI model will be specifically trained on medical data, including records, research, and the expertise of Mayo Clinic's clinicians. This specialized training is expected to improve healthcare outcomes for users. "We needed to have the right data and the right people in the right place to be able to do this," said Mayo Clinic CEO Gianrico Farrugia.
Future applications
Mayo Clinic will own the new AI model
The Mayo Clinic will own the new AI model, which could eventually be used in tools for clinicians at its hospitals. There's also potential for licensing this tech to other healthcare institutions. The partnership also plans to create an AI healthcare assistant that patients can interact with through the hospital's online portal.
Development
Model to 1st be tested by Mayo professionals
The AI model will first be made available to Mayo Clinic professionals for accuracy testing before wider deployment. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said it could take "many years" to train and refine the model for high-stakes health questions. The tool could let patients ask for more details about a diagnosis, understand next steps in their care, or get information on preventative care.
Others
Mayo's other AI projects
Mayo Clinic has anonymized patient data for use in AI training and has already created smaller AI models to help with tasks like detecting heart disease and diagnosing pancreatic cancer. The partnership will combine this experience with Microsoft's expertise in AI models and cloud computing resources. Despite the potential of this project, both parties have refrained from disclosing their financial commitments to it.