Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has begun the rollout of new industry-specific cloud products with the unveiling of its Cloud for Health Care suite. Microsoft's latest cloud suite offers a range of products for healthcare professionals, such as chatbots and scheduling software.
Microsoft's new rollout is putting it in direct competition with Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) for market shares of the cloud computing market. Microsoft's industry-specific packages will give the company an edge over the broader applications offered by Amazon. Microsoft announced the initiative to offer industry specific products in 2017.
The suite includes a wide range of programs to benefit healthcare workers. Among them is Bookings, through Microsoft's popular Teams app, which allows healthcare providers to manage patient appointments as well as to conduct teleconferencing calls without having to log off of Teams for another program. The suite also helps coordinate aftercare, an essential duty of healthcare providers to monitor the recovery of patients. The suite offers Microsoft's Healthcare Bot service, which the company has deployed to great effect amid the Coronavirus pandemic. The bots can answer basic questions and provide basic services to patients without the need for human intervention but can still get a human physician involved if needed.
"More than ever, being connected is critical to create an individualized patient experience," said Tom McGuinness, Vice President of Worldwide Health at Microsoft. "The Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare helps healthcare organizations to engage in more proactive ways with their patients, allows caregivers to improve the efficiency of their workflows and streamline interactions with Classified as Microsoft Confidential patients with more actionable results."
Microsoft's healthcare suite is the first in what may be a new trend of offering industry-specific cloud services by tech companies. Competitors, such as Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Amazon, have more broad offerings. However, business applications such as Google's G Suite are incredibly popular across many industries for their ability to connect different employees across long distances and share data effortlessly.