The Integrated Health Information Systems (IHiS) is currently working with Microsoft to develop a secure generative artificial intelligence (AI) solution for healthcare professionals in Singapore.
Called Secure GPT, the solution is a custom-built common platform using Azure OpenAI Service that will enable healthcare workers to generate insights and automate tasks for greater efficiency.
IHiS shares that the pilot will kick off in September, and several public healthcare entities have already registered their interest to experiment with the solution. They intend to explore the use of Secure GPT to:
- Summarise and detect topics that surface from seniors' engagement textual feedback and assist with trending topics
- Leverage large language models to improve the current chatbot to answer more naturally and save maintenance manpower
- Summarise medical reports with high accuracy in a short amount of time
- Knowledge management, to empower staff to search for required knowledge easily with cognitive search capability.
Since data privacy and protection are top concerns, especially in healthcare, Secure GPT's model build will be guided by responsible AI. It will be designed to securely handle Personally Identifiable Information (PII), and fortify user data protection. Azure OpenAI Service will also give the model the ability to generate contextual responses from a dedicated healthcare knowledge base, with security and compliance in alignment with healthcare data residency requirements.
"We've come to the point where technology is an integral part of the work that we do and the way we deliver healthcare services. This exciting collaboration with Microsoft will transform the way healthcare is delivered to improve the health of millions every day. The intelligent collaboration tools on cloud and AI-powered platforms will not just deliver greater convenience to clinicians, it will enable better focus on patient-centric work and change the way individuals take control of their health and health outcomes," says Ngiam Siew Ying, IHiS' chief executive officer.
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Collaboration in multiple areas
The development of Secure GPT is part of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between IHiS and Microsoft that aims to enhance the employee and patient experience in healthcare through the use of generative AI and cloud technologies.
The MOU outlines five key aspects of collaboration:
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- Learning and discovery: Cross-learning opportunities to build technical skills and domain knowledge in generative AI and cloud in health.
- Collaboration in the entire innovation lifecycle: Covering ideation, qualification, incubation, development, deployment, scaling and change management to increase adoption.
- Using Azure and security technologies: To optimise, automate, and modernise public healthcare IT and security infrastructure at scale to support diverse secure computing needs. This will enable public healthcare institutions to better deliver and scale up care securely, beyond the hospital to the community through advanced analytics, machine learning, and AI on a secure cloud platform.
- Improving clinical and operational insights through Microsoft Azure Intelligent Data Platform and Azure OpenAI Service: To build intelligent applications with generative AI to support multiple use cases for health.
- Harnessing Microsoft 365 on Cloud: Enabling greater collaboration to enhance the daily work experience with AI-powered Microsoft 365 tools.
"As generative AI gains traction and becomes mainstream, it is even more important that we partner very closely with our healthcare clusters and the entire ecosystem to bring this public-private sector collaboration [to] create a marketplace for innovations and radically change how healthcare professionals can work for the better. Together, we will fuel innovation for healthier nations," says Lee Hui Li, Singapore managing director for Microsoft.
