Ohio State and Microsoft sign five-year Azure health system deal

The health system plans to shift approximately 70–80 percent of its storage and compute workloads to Azure, including digital pathology and imaging. Azure will also serve as a backup platform for the electronic health record, supporting resilience and recovery functions.

A smart hospital platform is already operating at Richard M. Ross Heart Hospital and the James Outpatient Care facility. It is intended to improve energy efficiency and resource use, with plans to extend it to other facilities. Microsoft Fabric and OneLake will connect clinical, operational and research data across the medical centre, its colleges and regional campuses. The unified data layer is designed to help planners forecast surgical demand, staffing needs and operating room use.

For clinicians, Dragon Copilot is being used to draft clinical notes. The partners are also exploring workflows to help multidisciplinary teams coordinate care, though they have not specified the specialties or settings involved in those pilots.

Ohio State will also become a Microsoft Training Services Provider, widening access to Microsoft Learn resources and certifications for caregivers, researchers, faculty, staff and students. The five-year agreement provides a period for the organisations to expand the hospital platform and workforce certification programmes.