Duke Health and Microsoft Form
AI Partnership to Advance Medicine

Duke University and Duke Health have recently announced a monumental five-year strategic partnership with Microsoft to support artificial intelligence (AI) applications in medicine and lead transformation in healthcare delivery, champion health equity, and pioneer advanced research.

“We are excited to partner with Microsoft and bring our organizations’ talent together to solve the most pressing healthcare challenges,” said Duke AI Health Director and Vice Dean for Data Science Michael Pencina, PhD. “We will combine medical expertise, data science methods, and technology solutions to improve patient care and community health and advance the foundations of trustworthy health AI.”

Both Duke and Microsoft are part of the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI), a community of academic health systems, organizations, and expert practitioners of AI and data science, that aims to develop guidelines and guardrails to drive high-quality healthcare by promoting the adoption of credible, fair and transparent health AI systems.

“Our shared commitment with Microsoft as founding members of CHAI will continue to promote trustworthy, fair, and transparent health AI systems that support ethical and equitable data science,” said Dr. Pencina.

Duke and Microsoft will collaborate within the newly-established Duke Health AI Innovation Lab and Center of Excellence, where researchers will develop new AI tools while addressing potential risks. Duke already evaluates health AI tools through its Algorithm-Based Clinical Decision Support (ABCDS) Oversight program, a checkpoint-based process that aims to ensure the safety, effectiveness, and ethical use of AI tools and technology used in clinical decision-making processes at Duke and beyond. The ABCDS Oversight program will be vital to the new partnership as it plans to implement generative AI models like OpenAI’s GPT-4.

Learn more about the Duke-Microsoft partnership