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Microsoft Teams Innovations to Benefit Healthcare Organizations
At its 2019 Ignite conference, Microsoft announced important innovations to Office 365 that benefit healthcare organizations. In particular, Microsoft’s Teams offering has several enhancements to support clinical staff and patients.
Key takeaways from Microsoft Teams’ innovations that will benefit healthcare organizations include:
- A smart camera that can capture and annotate images during a patient exam.
- Priority-enabled notifications that enable staff to alert clinicians.
- Scheduling and appointment management.
- A PowerApps web portal that integrates directly with Teams’ channels. This portal can function as a user-facing website for sign-ins, patient data, and physician availability.
Our Take
Healthcare CIOs continue to seek options for reducing their infrastructure complexity. With the advent of cloud-based communications and collaboration, new opportunities are arising for outsourcing infrastructure and upgrading their legacy systems.
This also means that opportunities are opening for Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) vendors to move into the healthcare industry. However, with Microsoft Teams’ continued upgrades and foray into a wide range of industries, other UCaaS vendors are likely to be left behind if they do not win the argument against Microsoft’s offerings.
Slack and others may argue that Microsoft Teams is only “good enough” vs. a best-of-breed tool – but the bar for what counts as “good enough” for Microsoft Teams continues to be raised.
Source: Microsoft Teams Scorecard at SoftwareReviews. Accessed January 7, 2020.
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