LOS ANGELES and REDMOND, Wash., May 30,
2019 /PRNewswire/ -- UCLA Health is deploying Microsoft
cloud computing services to enable UCLA Health and the David Geffen
School of Medicine to synthesize vast amounts of clinical and
research data to speed medical discoveries and improve patient
care.
Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing service, will provide UCLA
Health with a standard platform through which disparate clinical
information and research tools can be secured and managed by the
health system. The solution will provide UCLA Health with advanced
computing tools to more rapidly interpret and mobilize insights
from such data and to enhance collaboration among researchers.
"Our data capabilities with Microsoft Azure will bring more
medical discoveries and effective therapies to patients faster,"
said Michael Pfeffer, M.D.,
assistant vice chancellor and chief information officer for UCLA
Health Sciences. "The integration of information from structured
data, like lab results and medication information, with
unstructured data, like documentation, genomics and medical images,
creates an incredibly powerful big-data learning platform for
discovery."
UCLA scientists will use the cloud
computing tools to more efficiently analyze a variety of data
sources. The artificial intelligence (AI) embedded in the tools
enables speedy processing of data to glean insights for use by
physicians and researchers. Machine learning enables software to
recognize and act on important data patterns without the need for
human instruction, producing discoveries as never before.
"Analyzing large data sets to make scientific discoveries is a
race against time," said Mohammed
Mahbouba, M.D., chief data officer for UCLA Health Sciences.
"Using machine learning to analyze a combination of clinical and
genomics data can provide critical insights, but doing so with a
traditional computing infrastructure can require significant
processing time. Azure enables us to quickly deploy and scale
high-performance computing environments that can reduce the
required processing time — sometimes from months to days
— to make discoveries."
UCLA Health's move to cloud computing is intended to advance the
health system's delivery of precision health, or the use of data
and a patient's individual circumstances, to tailor a more
effective treatment. In 2017, UCLA Health and the David Geffen
School of Medicine launched the UCLA Institute for Precision
Health, led by Daniel Geschwind,
M.D., Ph.D., to bring together faculty across multiple disciplines
to make large-scale genetic and genomic research actionable for
patient care. The David Geffen School of Medicine also
partnered with the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering to establish
a department of computational medicine, chaired by Eleazar Eskin, Ph.D., to leverage scholarship in
data sciences to discover new approaches to analyzing health
data.
"We are committed to creating better patient outcomes by
providing UCLA Health with Microsoft Azure cloud and AI solutions
to improve treatments and lives," said Peter Lee, corporate vice president, Microsoft
Healthcare. "By connecting health data and systems in the cloud in
an interoperable way, we're excited we can help advance health care
data for more efficient and personalized care."
The Azure platform employs industry-leading technology to help
protect and secure sensitive data, allowing UCLA Health to continue
to ensure compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act, or HIPAA. Patient data in UCLA Health's
platform will not be shared with Microsoft as part of this
agreement.
"Another advantage of cloud computing is the way it enables
UCLA researchers to more efficiently
and securely work with their peers," said Paul Boutros, Ph.D., director of Cancer Data
Science at UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.
"Cloud computing will allow researchers from different fields
and institutions to collaborate, joining data sets and software
from different formats that could not previously be integrated in a
simple way," Boutros said. "We're bringing together new communities
of experts — including computer scientists, engineers, material
scientists and others — to solve the biggest health care questions.
This platform allows us to provide our research collaborators with
secure access to important data in one place, without moving
sensitive, private health information."
The platform's capabilities will also enable UCLA Health to use
predictive analytics, or the analysis of historical data to model
and assess what might happen in the future, to aid in disease
prevention.
More about UCLA Health's efforts in precision health can be
found at https://www.uclahealth.org/precision-health/.
About UCLA Health
UCLA Health is among the world's most
comprehensive academic health systems, with a mission to
provide state-of-the-art patient care, train top medical
professionals and support pioneering research and discovery. UCLA
Health includes four hospitals on two campuses — Ronald Reagan
UCLA Medical Center; UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica; UCLA Mattel Children's
Hospital, and the Stewart and Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric
Hospital at UCLA — as well as
the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. UCLA Health also offers an array of primary
and specialty services at more than 170
clinics throughout Southern
California. UCLA Health hospitals in Westwood and Santa
Monica ranked No. 1 in Los
Angeles and No. 7 nationally in the 2018-19 U.S. News &
World Report assessment.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) enables digital
transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an
intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every
organization on the planet to achieve more.
View original content to download
multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ucla-health-adopts-microsoft-azure-to-accelerate-medical-research-and-improve-patient-care-300859137.html
SOURCE Microsoft Corp.