Azernews.Az

By Alimat Aliyeva

Microsoft has announced a new AI assistant for healthcare called Dragon Copilot, which the company claims will help doctors spend more time with patients by reducing routine administrative tasks, Azernews reports.

The Dragon Copilot AI assistant was developed by combining existing technologies—the Dragon Medical One speech recognition software and the DAX Copilot tool, which documents a doctor’s conversation with a patient. By merging these capabilities, Dragon Copilot aims to streamline medical documentation.

According to Microsoft, Dragon Copilot will enable doctors to quickly extract information from medical sources, automatically compile clinical notes, generate medication recommendations, and produce summaries after patient visits, among other tasks.

"Thanks to this technology, doctors will be able to focus more on the patient and less on the computer, which will lead to better outcomes and ultimately improve the quality of healthcare," Dr. David Ryu, Microsoft's Vice President of Global Healthcare, told reporters. A recent Google Cloud study from October found that doctors spend almost 28 hours a week on administrative tasks like filling out paperwork. This administrative burden is a major contributor to burnout among healthcare professionals.

In 2021, Microsoft acquired Nuance Communications, the developer of Dragon Medical One and DAX Copilot, for $16 billion, positioning the company as a significant player in the competitive AI-powered medical scribing (speech recognition and documentation) market.

Applications like DAX Copilot allow doctors to keep clinical notes in real time while interacting with patients. According to Microsoft, DAX Copilot has been used during over 3 million patient appointments in the past month by doctors in more than 600 medical organizations.

AI-driven tools like Dragon Copilot are not only improving efficiency in healthcare but also paving the way for more personalized patient care. By reducing the time doctors spend on administrative work, AI is enabling them to devote more attention to their patients, potentially enhancing patient satisfaction and improving health outcomes. As AI continues to evolve, it is expected to play an even larger role in transforming the healthcare industry, offering solutions to challenges such as staff shortages, rising patient volumes, and improving overall care delivery.