Microsoft Launches New AI Assistant ‘Dragon Copilot’: Assessing the Safety of AI Tools in Healthcare

Microsoft has unveiled a brand-new voice-activated AI assistant that will assist medical professionals in drafting documentation, transcribing clinical notes, and conducting speedy searches for information from medical sources.

As a component of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, Dragon Copilot is a new AI tool for healthcare. The AI voice company Nuance, which Microsoft purchased for $16 billion in 2021, developed the ambient listening and natural language voice dictation technology that it uses.

In a blog post, the company stated that these capabilities have been customized to include healthcare safeguards and further refined through the use of generative AI.

The need to reduce administrative burdens, boost productivity, and prevent clinician burnout is what is driving the development of generative AI tools for the healthcare sector. A significant player in the rapidly expanding market for AI note-taking tools is Microsoft.

“No one becomes a clinician to do paperwork, but it’s becoming a bigger and bigger administrative burden, taking time and attention away from actually treating and supporting patients. That’s why we’re introducing Microsoft Dragon Copilot, the industry’s first AI assistant for clinical workflow,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a post on X.

How to use Dragon Copilot?

Microsoft Dragon Copilot is based on pre-existing tools like Nuance Communications’ Dragon Medical One (DMO) and DAX, which are speech recognition software.

Microsoft claims that DAX’s ambient AI technology has aided over 3 million ambient patient conversations across 600 healthcare organizations in the last month alone, while DMO’s speech capabilities have assisted clinicians in transcribing “billions of patient records.”.

According to Microsoft, Dragon Copilot’s underlying architecture helps organizations provide better experiences and results for both patients and providers in a variety of care settings.

“By leveraging our dependable, decades-long experience that has continuously improved provider wellness and clinical and financial outcomes for provider organizations and the patients they serve, we are bringing the first unified voice AI experience to the market with the launch of our new Dragon Copilot,” said Joe Petro, corporate vice president of Microsoft Health and Life Sciences Solutions and Platforms, in a statement.

How to use Dragon Copilot?

According to Microsoft, memos and notes can be drafted using Dragon Copilot in a customized format and style. In addition to transcribing audio to text, the Dragon Copilot user interface lets users create AI-generated notes by using templates or submitting prompts.

Clinicians can use the AI assistant to look up general medical information from reliable sources in addition to documenting tasks. In a single, centralized workspace, it can also be used to automate important tasks like conversational orders, note and clinical evidence summaries, referral letters, and after-visit summaries, according to Microsoft.