Microsoft signs first AI healthcare partnership in Vietnam

Microsoft signs first AI healthcare partnership in Vietnam Adam Ang

AI healthcare software company VinBrain, a company backed by Vietnam's largest conglomerate Vingroup, has entered into a formal collaboration with Microsoft.

WHAT IT'S ABOUT

According to a press release, the partnership, which is a first for the global tech company in Vietnam, will work on three areas of AI healthcare: data sharing, cross-product validation, and R&D.

VinBrain will leverage DrAid, its suite of AI-powered pathology solutions which can detect 21 disease indicators of the heart, lungs and bone. The US FDA-approved platform is being used by around 2,000 doctors and more than 100 hospitals in Vietnam.

The AI platform runs on a dataset of over 2 million images sourced from multiple regions – the United States, Asia, and Europe. These data will be shared via Microsoft Azure, which will also ensure privacy and security, manage ever-changing compliance regulations, and improve data governance.

As part of the collaboration, VinBrain will also use Azure Cognitive Services for Computer Vision to validate new deep-learning models, including Microsoft's latest computer vision model called Florence.

It also seeks to use Azure Cognitive Services to develop its own AI capabilities for processing and returning images and building, deploying, and improving image classifiers, expecting that the service will help increase the accuracy of DrAid's imaging capability.

The same service will also be used by both companies in their joint R&D to come up with new AI products that tackle global healthcare challenges.

WHY IT MATTERS

Through Microsoft and VinBrain's collaboration, AI can be applied to improve medical services in remote areas where there are limited medical facilities. "On the social aspect, this will help speed up the process of resolving [the] increasing number of healthcare issues with a lack of infrastructure, uneven doctor-to-patient ratio, and increased demand for healthcare services," they said in a statement.

For VinBrain CEO Steven Truong, this partnership will deepen the company's focus on and boost its development of AI products in the health technology space. "Using the latest foundation of AI technology and evaluation, this collaboration with Microsoft will directly impact billions of people through early [disease] detection and workflow productivity," he added.

On the other hand, the collaboration is seen to open up opportunities for Microsoft to expand its presence in Southeast Asia's healthcare scene, according to Dr Yumao Lu, a partner engineering manager at Microsoft USA.

THE LARGER TREND

VinBrain recently developed an AI model for screening tuberculosis, one of the highly prevalent diseases in Vietnam. The TB diagnosis model, which was developed using Microsoft Azure, has since been integrated into DrAid.