This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Healthcare and Life Sciences Blog articles.
In the current era of Large Language Models (LLMs), there is a growing demand for AI in healthcare. Healthcare organizations are actively exploring ways to leverage these advanced technologies to develop their own GPT-powered Copilots for doctors or virtual health assistants for patients. It's important to understand that healthcare organizations will only use these tools when they adhere to the highest security and compliance standards required for healthcare purposes
The escalating demand is driven by the recognition that AI systems can significantly enhance healthcare experiences with many different tasks, such as assisting with administrative or clinical tasks. The goal is to build intelligent and engaging chat experiences that utilizes generative AI, providing accurate, relevant, and consistent information based on credible healthcare information or validated customer sources.
To meet these evolving needs, we’ve seen that healthcare organizations are looking for a hybrid approach. This approach involves the integration of protocol-based flows alongside generative AI-based healthcare scenarios. The aim is to offer a more personalized and comprehensive service to both healthcare professionals and patient.
More importantly, this hybrid approach requires healthcare-specific safeguards. Recognizing the sensitive nature of healthcare data, it is crucial to implement measures that adhere to the quality standards of the healthcare industry. This includes leveraging grounded models, having the needed disclaimers, including evidence, include feedback system, have real-time abuse monitoring and incorporating safeguards of the information provided.
In response to these industry demands, we are excited that our team recently announced the private preview of the Azure AI Health Bot Copilot features. This expansion empowers healthcare organizations to build Copilots for their organization, leveraging the capabilities of generative AI to streamline administrative and clinical workloads.
New Copilot features in the Azure AI Health Bot
We are enabling these features by integrating the Azure AI Health bot with Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Search service and Bing Custom Search. With these integrations we are enabling the following capabilities
- Generate customized responses by tapping into your own data sources. Integrate your Azure OpenAI service endpoint and Azure AI Search index to produce answers tailored to your preferred sources.
- Generate responses using your own websites. Incorporate your Azure OpenAI service endpoint and Big Custom Search service to utilize trusted website content for refining the Language Model.
- Harness healthcare intelligence capabilities for generative answers from reliable healthcare sources.
Make use of the Azure AI Health Bot's built-in Credible sources, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) - Implement a comprehensive fallback sequence incorporating the above capabilities. Design a copilot that follows a fallback sequence if no answer is found, ensuring a robust response strategy.
All this is available through our Template Catalog. Where you are able to import one or more templates into your own bot instance. By importing these templates you recieve a validated scenario that shows how you can utilize these new features in the best way possible.
All the different templates provides a scenario that explains how to use the new Generative Answers or Healthcare Intelligence step and also shows how you can cascade from one source to another, ensuring a robust and flexible response strategy.
Adhering to healthcare security and compliance standards
The Azure AI Health Bot prioritizes security and compliance of Personal Health Information (PHI), ensuring confidentiality and integrity of sensitive health-related data and makes sure it adheres to the needed compliance standards.
The Azure AI Health Bot, which has over 50 global and regional certifications, such as GDPR, HIPAA and FedRAMP, has built-in controls for Data Subject Rights (DSRs) and compliance measures, offering a comprehensive approach to managing user data in adherence to regulatory standards.
To enable consent management, the Health Bot includes a built-in Consent Management system, facilitating the acquisition, retention, and renewal of user consents. This not only enhances the user experience but also ensures compliance with data protection regulations.
In addition to consent management, the platform provides out-of-the-box Audit Trails for a detailed analysis and traceability of changes and data access. This feature promotes transparency and accountability in the handling of health-related data.
It also incorporates automated and customizable Data Retention Policies specifically designed for conversation data. These out-of-the-box policies ensure that data retention is managed efficiently, aligning with regulatory requirements and organizational needs.
Ensuring that Generative AI is used in a responsible way
With the integration of Generative AI, we made sure every AI response generated by the Azure AI Health Bot includes a disclaimer, reinforcing transparency in AI interactions and informing users about the nature of the automated responses. To further enhance transparency, we automatically append evidence to every AI response, creating a documented trail that contributes to accountability and establishes trust in the platform's functionalities.
With the built-in end-user feedback mechanism we allow users to provide feedback, fostering a continuous feedback loop for the improvement and refinement of the AI Health Bot's capabilities.
The platform's architecture also supports healthcare safeguards, including battle-tested meta-prompts and Azure Content Filtering, ensuring a secure and reliable environment for health-related interactions.
Lastly, Real-Time Abuse Monitoring is constantly monitoring and acting on problematic prompts, adding an extra layer of security by blocking and logging abusive interactions and providing an overview of potential issues.
We can’t wait to see what your organization will do with these new capabilities. Feel free to request access to the private preview of these new features here: Microsoft Forms or via the template catalog in your Azure AI Health Bot instance. (Places are limited)
We are looking forward to see how you will utilize AI to transform your way of working to reduce clinician burnout, increase patient satisfaction or improve healthcare altogether.