Customers are shaping industries in groundbreaking ways: How the cloud is democratizing digital to unlock a new wave of innovation
I have been talking a lot this year about democratizing digital. It is about empowering everyone to have a digital experience and enabling everyone to participate in the digital economy. This trend is large-scale, with broad business and social impact. This was clear earlier this month at the Microsoft Government Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C. There, I met with federal agency and department leaders to discuss how cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) are delivering new levels of innovation and impacting entire markets and industries.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) offers one of the best examples of the power of data and AI to transform agricultural productivity through the FarmBeats initiative. By using data from sensors, drones, satellites and tractors, farmers hope to reduce costs, increase yields and grow crops that are more sustainable. The USDA is piloting FarmBeats at its largest research facility — a 7,000-acre farm in Beltsville, Maryland, with plans to expand the technology to more than 200 farms in the national research network, ranging from small family farms to large commercial operations.
Another example of government innovation is taking place within the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) Office of Aviation Services. The DOI is increasing the speed, accuracy and scalability of data captured from over 500 million acres of land from its unmanned aviation systems — more commonly known as drones. By leveraging Power BI and PowerApps, employees can build tools and custom applications to quickly gain insights from data captured during critical missions (like natural disaster relief).
Health care is one of the most important areas of focus as we talk about democratizing digital. To support this, we have announced three important partnerships, each aimed at solving pressing challenges facing doctors, researchers and patients. Yesterday we announced our seven-year partnership with Humana to develop predictive solutions for personalized and secure patient support. Using the Microsoft Azure cloud, Azure AI and Microsoft 365, Humana will also be able to equip home health care workers with real-time access to information and voice technology to better understand key factors that influence patient health.
We also announced last week a partnership with health care solutions provider Nuance to transform the doctor-patient experience through the delivery of ambient clinical intelligence technologies (ACI). By using speech-recognition technology and advanced conversational AI with Azure, doctors will have more time to focus on meaningful conversations with their patients. Once a patient gives consent to the ACI system, the clinical documentation writes itself — all while meeting the security and privacy requirements of this regulated industry.
