Collaboration between Microsoft and Walgreens focuses on digital health services

Drugstore chain Walgreens and Microsoft have started a seven-year collaboration to research and develop new delivery methods for health services. That’s what Reuters says.

As part of the collaboration, the companies focus on virtually connecting people to Walgreens stores. They also offer services in therapeutic areas such as preventive self-care and the management of chronic diseases. The two companies will continue to develop health solutions to reduce the number of first aid visits and hospital re-admissions, while reducing the cost of care.

Walgreens said it would run a pilot with a maximum of twelve stores, which would sell select health-related appliances in 2019. In the announcement, Microsoft also mentions possible new aspects for the retail sector, perhaps referring to the cash-less stores that make it possible. At most Walgreens locations, customers can also do their daily shopping, where cash-less shopping then comes into its own.

Microsoft will also become the cloud provider of Walgreens. The Microsoft 365 software will be rolled out to more than 380,000 Walgreens employees and stores. As a result, Microsoft will have a large number of Microsoft 365 users in one go.

Amazon

Microsoft is not the only tech company that focuses on the health industry in this way. Last year, Amazon launched a service called Amazon Comprehend Medical, which allows healthcare providers to analyse medical records. This should enable them to improve patient care and reduce costs.

In addition, the service must be able to identify medical conditions, anatomical terms, medicines, details of medical tests, treatments and procedures from a range of different documents. Using the artificial intelligence of AWS, ACM can analyse and scan documents and photos for relevant data that medical professionals can use for proper medical treatment. Furthermore, ACM can analyze physicians’ notes.