Microsoft Health VPs talk AI development, research at NYC briefing

Burnout, workforce shortages, stretched margins: These are the commonly cited, pervasive issues in healthcare that AI tools like scribes and agents were made to help address.

With sweeping issues like these comes a surplus of potential solutions. Research from nonprofit researcher Epoch AI found the number of AI tools available has doubled about every six months, with the training compute—meaning the processing capability available to train large language models—that’s used to create these tools growing at a rate of 4.4x per year since 2010.

Microsoft Health is one of many Big Tech companies to hop on the trend and introduce its own AI clinical assistant, Dragon Copilot, to do exactly that. At a press briefing on Feb. 11 in New York City, Corporate VP of Microsoft Health and Life Sciences Solutions and Platforms Joe Petro shared that 170,000 health and life sciences companies worldwide are using Microsoft’s tech, with 100,000+ clinicians using Dragon Copilot and more than 600 health systems adopting its ambient tech, DAX Copilot, over the past 18 months.

Per Microsoft’s data, Petro said, these tools save up to seven minutes per use, freeing up enough time for providers to see five more patients a day.

MAI, MAI, MAI…In May 2024, Microsoft formed a new AI team, Microsoft AI (MAI), with VP of Health Dominic King helping to research how the company can use AI in new ways in healthcare, such as by diagnosing diseases and improving the tools it already has in place. In December, the team released data analyzing almost 40 million anonymized Copilot conversations that showed health was consistently the top use.

When it comes to researching different tools and AI’s capabilities, Petro told Healthcare Brew Microsoft approaches it from a client need and product perspective.

“From a product point of view, the first thing we focus on is the outcome,” he said. “So if we intend to reduce physician burden, how do you put metrics around that?”

When working with clients, the process to develop ambient scribes can take years to develop the AI as Microsoft proceeds from “turning a conversation into a clinical document,” he said. This involves taking steps like developing partnerships with or acquiring companies and getting data usage clauses squared away.

Big Tech encroaches. This growth within the healthcare space isn’t exactly news to anyone who’s been paying attention to the recent developments from the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Amazon, all of which have announced new patient-focused agentic AI tools since the beginning of the year.

“Healthcare is attractive because it is data-rich, emotionally attractive (we all need and care about it), and there’s persistent demand for interpretation rather than raw information, i.e., patients frequently struggle to understand test results, diagnoses, and care pathways while healthcare professionals are often confronted by conflicting interpretations of the evidence,” James Barlow, professor and chair of technology and innovation management in healthcare at London’s Imperial College Business School, told us via email.

However, he added, these also pose risks by creating “false reassurance by blurring boundaries between contextual information and clinical judgment.” Plus, there are other big concerns that have been previously raised around privacy and the lack of regulation.

What’s likely to happen next, he said, is these Big Tech companies will further embed into health systems and the wider healthcare ecosystem.

“In the medium term, Big Tech’s moves into patient health information may disrupt established, ‘traditional’ patient–health provider relationships,” Barlow said. “In the longer term, platforms may increasingly shape care-seeking behaviour and channel patients toward company-affiliated services, disrupting incumbent healthcare providers.”

Correction 02/18/2026: This story has been corrected to reflect that the MAI research organization formed in March 2024, not November 2025. The health team at MAI emerged at the end of 2024.