PointClickCare uses Azure to empower healthcare innovation and improve patient care

Medical documentation is complex—incomplete patient data puts providers and patients at risk. Patient documentation quality is also at an all-time low, and providers need support. The healthcare industry is experiencing historically low staffing.

PointClickCare knew generative AI could help and built a pilot solution using Azure and Azure OpenAI Service to automate tasks and data analysis. It also used Azure Machine Learning, Azure AI, and Azure Databricks.

With the new solution, PointClickCare developers report reduced development time, and customers report increased operational efficiency. Reduced workloads mean healthcare staff can focus more on patients.

All of this demonstrates the potential of AI for standardization across different healthcare settings, ensuring consistent, high-quality care for patients every step of the way. With the support of Microsoft and the power of generative AI, we’re excited to be leading the way.

Hussein Al-Olimat, Senior Applied Researcher-NLP, PointClickCare

Accurate patient data and clear documentation, including medical history, treatment plans, and prescriptions, are critical to ensuring quality patient care. PointClickCare, a healthcare technology company, provides an industry-leading electronic health record (EHR) platform and care collaboration network that makes this information accessible to millions of care providers across North America.

However, ongoing staffing and financial stressors on the healthcare system create added challenges. “We hear from customers that healthcare staffing issues can put documentation quality at risk,” says Dean Slawson, Vice President of Advanced Technology at PointClickCare. “Meanwhile documentation is a huge burden for clinicians who want to focus on delivering care. We want to remedy this and revolutionize the healthcare industry by applying AI responsibly—with patients and their caregivers at the center.”

As AI automates more tasks like patient check-ins and billing processes, it can significantly reduce the workload for healthcare staff so they can focus more on patients.

Dean Slawson, VP of Advanced Technology, PointClickCare

The power of AI-readiness

PointClickCare had previously migrated 1 million data tables from multiple locations to Microsoft Azure. Jillian Cardinell, Applied AI Researcher at PointClickCare, says that the move set the stage for AI innovation, so continuing the AI journey with Microsoft was an obvious choice. “Microsoft is as committed to building trustworthy data and AI systems that can protect PHI (protected health information) and PII (personally identifiable information) as we are.”

“We are developing a solution to support providers with everything from automating administrative tasks to summarizing shift and meeting notes to analyzing vast amounts of patient data quickly,” says Ben Kandel, Principal Applied Machine Learning Researcher at PointClickCare. Empowering AI capabilities through Azure Databricks was key. “The ability to aggregate and analyze data from different sources, present insights in a comprehensive view, and scale to process billions of data points makes Azure Databricks critical to our pilot solution,” says Kandel.

With Azure Machine Learning and Azure Databricks, PointClickCare created a powerful, integrated data and analytics ecosystem. “We primarily use Azure Databricks for data processing and Azure ML Workspace for model building,” says Hussein Al-Olimat, Senior Applied Researcher-NLP at PointClickCare. “With Azure Databricks, we can process and analyze large volumes of data efficiently so providers can gain real-time insights that make a difference in quality care.”

PointClickCare used Azure managed databases, including Azure SQL Managed Instance, Azure SQL, Azure Database PostgreSQL, and Azure Cosmos DB, to enhance its data management and analytics capabilities. It chose to use Azure OpenAI Service in Azure AI Studio to help speed production of generative AI solutions that can empower users across the entire value chain. It also deployed Microsoft Power BI for its efficiency in analyzing and sharing big data, along with its personalized dashboards and interactive reports.

Microsoft is as committed to building trustworthy data and AI systems that can protect PHI (protected health information) and PII (personally identifiable information) as we are.

Jillian Cardinell, Applied AI Researcher, PointClickCare

Greater innovation and accuracy

PointClickCare was an early adopter of GitHub Copilot to support developer speed and innovation. Almost immediately, the company’s developers reported reduced time in creating solutions that make a difference to providers and patients. This includes AI-driven functionality that can pull all data from a patient’s multiple provider history, including real-time information, into a single report.

With the help of Azure AI, PointClickCare launched a pilot program to explore extracting actionable insights from unstructured text like medical notes and reports. It also supports predictive text, which can improve documentation accuracy. “Azure AI Search offers autocomplete and search suggestion capabilities that can complete terms or phrases based on partial input,” says Cardinell. In addition, Azure AI Document Intelligence supports automated document compliance checks.

“As AI automates more tasks like patient check-ins and billing processes, it can significantly reduce the workload for healthcare staff so they can focus more on patients,” says Slawson.

Adds Al-Olimat, “All of this demonstrates the potential of AI for standardization across different healthcare settings, ensuring consistent, high-quality care for patients every step of the way. With the support of Microsoft and the power of generative AI, we’re excited to be leading the way.”

Find out more about PointClickCare on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

The ability to aggregate and analyze data from different sources, present insights in a comprehensive view, and scale to process billions of data points makes Azure Databricks critical to our pilot solution.

Ben Kandel, Principal Applied Machine Learning Researcher, PointClickCare