Teladoc strikes integration with Microsoft Teams


As Microsoft looks to build out its presence in healthcare, the company struck an integration deal with Teladoc Health. It plans to offer Teladoc’s virtual care platform for hospitals through its video conferencing software, Microsoft Teams.

Since the start of the pandemic, Microsoft said some health systems and physicians turned to Microsoft Teams to connect with patients. At the same time, Zoom and other video conferencing competitors began to more aggressively market their healthcare capabilities

Teladoc’s bread-and-butter is still offering telehealth services to employers in exchange for a subscription fee. It’s looking to add more health system customers, building on its $600 million acquisition of InTouch Health last year. 

In a news release, Teladoc CEO Joseph DeVivo said the joint effort would give clinicians a more seamless experience, reduce administrative tasks and use both companies’ machine learning expertise.

Through its partnership with Teladoc, Microsoft plans to add to its enterprise healthcare efforts that were set in motion last year, when it started offering cloud services for healthcare.

Microsoft’s recent proposal to acquire healthcare AI company Nuance for $19.7 billion hints at its future plans. Nuance is best known for its dictation software used to pull health information into clinical notes, as well as voice-based consent and medication orders. The company, which has partnered with Microsoft for years, also began integrating these capabilities into Microsoft Teams after the start of the pandemic.

The deal passed antitrust regulators last month and is expected to close this year.

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