Microsoft-GE Healthcare unite to launch COVID-19 monitoring software

Microsoft Corporation and GE Healthcare have recently formed a partnership to launch a cloud-based, COVID-19 patient monitoring software platform. This platform will enable healthcare professionals to remotely monitor coronavirus-infected patients.

This platform, dubbed Mural Virtual Care Solution, was originally planned to be introduced earlier in 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the solution was retooled on the Azure cloud of Microsoft to rapidly assist the medical professionals in monitoring patients infected by the coronavirus, including those patients on ventilators support.

Microsoft Corp. is a multinational technology company that manufactures, licenses, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, personal computers and related services. On the other hand, GE Healthcare is a manufacturer and distributor of radiopharmaceuticals and diagnostic imaging agents.

These two companies will reportedly enable hospitals to gain free access to the new software platform until January 2021. One installation of the software is enough to monitor a multi-site ICU network with 100 beds, 3 senior nurses, and 2 intensivists for day and night. This will help significantly reduce the number of staff on-site as the cloud-based platform can collect data from labs, electronic medical records, patient monitoring systems, ventilators, and other systems in real-time into 1 central hub. This will also enable clinicians to efficiently monitor multiple patients at one time.

Through the recent introduction of the remote monitoring tools, Microsoft believes that medical professionals will face lower risk and exposure to the infected patients as well as ease the burden on the diminishing supply of the personal protective equipment during the ongoing pandemic. At present, there are nearly 620,000 positive cases of coronavirus-infected patients in the United States, with over 27,500 deaths.

Dr. David Rhew, Global Chief Medical Officer at Microsoft, has reportedly stated that the company is striving to support the healthcare centers with limited resources and a greater number of ventilated patients. Mural Virtual Care available on the Microsoft Azure platform will help scale the remote surveillance and management activities of the ventilated patients.

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