NVIDIA AI integrates with Microsoft Azure machine learning

NVIDIA AI integrates with Microsoft Azure machine learning Andrea Fox

NVIDIA AI Enterprise, available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, announced this week that it has expanded support for secure development and deployment of artificial intelligence with a new Azure Machine Learning integration that could enhance the delivery of enterprise-ready generative AI for healthcare and other clients.

WHY IT MATTERS

With NVIDIA AI Enterprise on Azure ML, developers can access the company's highest-performance computing resources to inference, or use a trained model to infer a result from live data.

Pre-trained models and development tools include NVIDIA Rapids, which accelerates data science workloads, and NVIDIA Metropolis, which supports AI model development, according to the company.

With a "wave" of generative AI applications, enterprises are seeking secure accelerated development tools, said Manuvir Das, vice president of enterprise computing at NVIDIA, in the announcement.

Azure Machine Learning provides performance and security, "enabling enterprises and developers to easily access everything they need to train and deploy custom, secure large language models,” added John Montgomery, corporate vice president of AI platform at Microsoft.

In March, the partners also announced that NVIDIA Omniverse Cloud – a full-stack cloud environment for developing, deploying and managing industrial metaverse applications at scale – is available on Microsoft Azure.

Building NVIDIA Omniverse within Azure could "supercharge" digitization because of the combined capabilities, said Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, in a statement.

NVIDIA's production-ready AI capabilities on Azure include access to the company's experts and support.

The Azure ML integration is being offered through a limited technical preview.

THE LARGER TREND

Healthcare is expanding AI adoption to lower costs, bolster security and improve patient care.

NVIDIA has partnered with Microsoft and several other companies on a variety of AI-driven partnerships offering platforms that can transform healthcare technology – from creating metaverse environments that foster testing and collaboration, such as robotic surgery, to developing AI applications that analyze medical images and healthcare data.

Through a medical device collaboration with Medtronic, NVIDIA's real-time computing software for building medical devices and its AI hardware platform are enhancing the company's intelligent endoscopy module. The AI-enhanced diagnostic images can improve colonoscopies and patient outcomes, the companies say, helping physicians detect polyps that can lead to colorectal cancer. The integrated module is expected to be available this year, according to a previous announcement.

"Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool that can increase the speed, efficiency and effectiveness of global health systems," Kimberly Powell, vice president of healthcare at NVIDIA, said in March.

"We’re collaborating with Medtronic to accelerate AI innovation by enabling a software-defined business model, with the goal of improving clinical decision-making, reducing medical variability and driving better patient outcomes," she said.

ON THE RECORD

"The combination of NVIDIA AI Enterprise software and Azure Machine Learning will help enterprises speed up their AI initiatives with a straight, efficient path from development to production," said Das in a statement.

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.