Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM) has inked a five-year relationship with Microsoft, centered on Microsoft’s Azure and analytical tools, as part of JHM’s inHealth precision medicine initiative. Under the terms of the agreement, Azure will become JHM’s preferred cloud partner.

In support of inHealth, JHM has established 16 Precision Medicine Centers of Excellence, where researchers are pursuing work in numerous disease settings, such as prostate cancer and multiple sclerosis, says JHM. The organization aims to have 50 centers over the next five years.

Johns Hopkins has previously used Microsoft services as the medical institution developed its Precision Medicine Analytics Platform (PMAP), a data platform that allows collection and analysis information from an array of sources in a secure environment.

The new agreement will enable inHealth to expand use of other Microsoft resources, such as advanced services, artificial intelligence, machine learning and analytics, says JHM.

[Image courtesy: JHM]