Microsoft makes upgrades to clinical AI assistant

Microsoft launched several new capabilities in its Dragon Copilot tool, including the ability to provide clinicians with relevant information within the clinical workflow.

Ahead of HIMSS26 next week, Microsoft announced the new features within its clinical AI assistant, which is increasingly used in healthcare delivery. According to a company blog post, more than 100,000 clinicians use Dragon Copilot in their practice.

A key new capability is the tool's ability to gather information from various sources -- including clinical content with citations, patient data, such as diagnoses, labs and medications, and organizational policies, schedules and other communications -- and provide the insights to the clinician while they are working in the EHR or an application. For instance, while writing a clinical note, a clinician can ask the Copilot system to add more detail, and the tool will gather relevant information, including information gleaned from ambient listening, to provide context.

The tool will also surface Marketplace apps purchased by customers, including Optum, Canary Speech and Regard, within clinical workflows, as needed.

Additionally, Dragon Copilot aims to streamline clinical documentation by leveraging AI models to ensure clinical accuracy and evaluating note quality using the Provider Document Summarization Quality Instrument (PDSQI9). The tool is adding ICD‑10 code suggestions during the review of clinical notes and reusable clinical templates for routine tasks. Further, the tool will bring over existing commands, vocabularies, profiles and templates from Dragon Medical One, Microsoft's speech recognition solution for clinical documentation. It will also allow clinicians to capture and translate patient conversations in 58 languages and convert them into notes in the primary language used in each country.

Finally, Dragon Copilot has added role-specific workflows for physicians, nurses, radiologists and other care team members. These workflows will provide specific documents, templates and tools tailored to each role. For example, nurses can use Dragon Copilot to convert conversations into structured flow sheet entries, and radiologists can use it to automate steps involved in creating a report.

"AI will only transform healthcare if it truly serves the people delivering care," wrote Kees Hertogh, vice president, public sector and healthcare marketing at Microsoft, in the blog post. "Dragon Copilot is built for that purpose -- bringing role‑based experiences, hands‑free workflows, and proactive clinical intelligence together in a way that fits naturally into how clinicians work."

The launch comes as more companies are leaning into AI implementation, particularly agentic AI.

Earlier this week, CVS Health unveiled a health tech services subsidiary that will use agentic AI to engage consumers, break down silos and promote interoperability. Additionally, Highmark Health shared that it has implemented an agentic AI-driven medical chart processing platform.

Anuja Vaidya has covered the healthcare industry since 2012. She currently covers the virtual healthcare landscape, including telehealth, remote patient monitoring and digital therapeutics.