Microsoft makes industry clouds for manufacturing, sustainability, and more available

Last month, Microsoft announced that Cloud for Financial Services will be made available from November 1. Today at its Ignite conference, alongside that, the tech giant has unveiled a bunch of other cloud verticals as well.

Three new cloud services which were first showcased at the previous iteration of Ignite have now progressed in terms of their stages of release. Namely, these include Cloud for Manufacturing, Cloud for Sustainability, and Cloud for Nonprofit.

For its cloud platform in the healthcare domain, Microsoft has highlighted recent updates which offer:

• Enhanced patient engagement: Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare offers an enhanced patient view that allows providers to associate one patient record with other patient records and easily navigate between them for faster access (in preview). The new Waiting Room in Microsoft Teams helps patients know they’ve taken the right steps to connect to their appointment (in preview). Integration of Microsoft Forms with Microsoft Bookings helps with data collection from a patient’s prior visit to a virtual visit (in preview). A new mobile browser join function allows a patient to join a virtual visit from a mobile device (generally available).
• Improved clinical and operational insights: Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare offers better modeling of healthcare data in dataverse, allowing partners to define the process and experience for their customers (generally available). Improved ingestion of healthcare data allows customers to select how much data is copied between systems, minimizing duplication and saving space (in preview).
• Increased health team collaboration: Microsoft Teams Electronic Health Record (EHR) Connector – Cerner allows visits to be launched from within EHR system patient or provider portals (in preview). A scheduled queue for virtual visits in Microsoft Bookings offers a dashboard-like view of the day and real-time appointment updates (in preview). Virtual Visits Manager, a standalone Teams app, simplifies the data analytics process through reporting and actionable insights about virtual consults (in preview).

Furthermore, Cloud for Manufacturing and Cloud for Sustainability are now in preview. The former provides an end-to-end manufacturing solution alongside partner services for support, while the latter helps organizations manage their sustainability goals to reduce their carbon emission and ultimately reach net zero. Cloud for Sustainability was previously available in the form of a private preview, while Cloud for Manufacturing will now be pushed to customers. Cloud for Nonprofit, meanwhile, is now generally available as well.