Liverpool Hospital partners with Microsoft in cardiology care

Digital & Innovation: Liverpool Hospital and tech giant Microsoft have joined forces in a collaboration aimed at enhancing the way cardiologists navigate and utilise vast volumes of cardiology-related literature and guidelines to enhance decision-making in clinical practice.

‘The Cardiology Canon’ is a pioneering digital solution empowered by generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) enabling clinicians to interact seamlessly with an extensive repository of cardiology literature. Leveraging Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, the platform was developed using data from clinical trials spanning four decades and guidelines endorsed by cardiac societies in Australia, Europe, and the United States.

The Microsoft Technology Centre team processed more than 500 individual documents and 80,000 pages to create a cognitive vector search index and made the solution accessible via a web application.

“We worked with Microsoft technologists to create a bespoke prototype to allow cardiologists and anyone training in the field to query vast volumes of literature to answer clinical questions or make nuanced comparisons, traversing the significant body of literature,” said Dr Hao Tran, Cardiology Advanced Trainee at Liverpool Hospital.

“The solution also successfully generated a comprehensive six-day training program on aortic stenosis — a common clinical problem among patients — and generated comprehensive learning resources in hours, rather than days.

“It was presented at the Liverpool Cardiology Academy academic seminar with Microsoft collaborators Viren Joseph, Leon Smith and Daniel Xu and was championed by senior Liverpool Hospital cardiologists Professor Craig Juergens and Dr Sidney Lo. It’s been a truly collaborative project that I believe will greatly benefit cardiologists and patients,” Dr Tran added.

Dr Simon Kos, Chief Medical Officer at Microsoft Australia and New Zealand, highlighted the invaluable role of hospital clinicians in driving innovation.

“We’re excited to collaborate with Liverpool Hospital on this initiative and unlock the incredible potential of generative AI in health care. This innovative approach is empowering the hospital’s cardiologists to stay ahead in their field, ensuring the highest standard of patient care,” Dr Kos said.

This announcement coincides with a report by Microsoft and the Tech Council of Australia, spotlighting the economic and productivity opportunities of generative AI for Australia. Healthcare emerges as one of the primary sectors poised to benefit from this technology, potentially contributing $5–13 billion in value annually to the sector in Australia by 2030.

The report indicated that generative AI has the potential to automate 25% and augment 5% of nursing tasks, allowing nurses to dedicate more personalised time to patients. Additionally, it forecasts that 30% of new medicines could be discovered using this technology by 2025.

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