Q&A: Microsoft Healthcare’s Peter Lee on How the Cloud Will Transform Health IT

From security to collaboration, the tech giant envisions major benefits for patients and providers. Cloud technology is becoming a crucial solution for healthcare systems of all types. No provider is too large or small to benefit, says Peter Lee, corporate vice president of Microsoft Healthcare.

“From a one-nurse clinic in Kenya to Kaiser Permanente and everything in between, we have the privilege to see these organizations making this shift of their fundamental IT infrastructure from on-premises systems to the cloud,” Lee says, “and a real desire to embrace machine learning and AI and data science.”

The challenge comes in helping providers embrace the shift and in developing new tools and interventions to facilitate seamless, intuitive care. But much of the relevant data to do so comes via electronic health records — a platform Microsoft wants to assist, not displace.

“What the EHR companies do is really important and has a level of complexity and expertise Microsoft would never take on,” Lee says. “But we know that more and more of those systems will be migrating to the cloud. Even the ones that don’t will have a need for cloud services.”

The goal: using cloud technology to help providers collaborate, cut costs and cure disease.