If you’ve seen one big, corporate event, you’ve seen them all, right? If you’d have told me that a couple of weeks ago, I might’ve agreed. But not after the recent Microsoft Ready – an event for internal employees, running parallel to Microsoft’s partner-focused Inspire. I feel invigorated and inspired by what I witnessed. I feel… Ready. Sat in the departure lounge at McCarran International Airport, and resisting the temptation to splurge the last of my spare dollars on a ‘Welcome to Las Vegas’ fridge magnet, I find myself reaching for my laptop. I feel an unprecedented need to write about what I learnt about employee engagement. To remember, and reflect on how a company can successfully connect with its most valuable assets…

Stay humble

Microsoft events are always an incredible learning experience. This year’s Microsoft Ready was no different. Together, Microsoft employees and partners joined to reaffirm our belief in the Microsoft ethos – that our technology is designed to empower everyone.

That, alone, is humbling. To think that technology we all too often take for granted has the power to transform and grow a small business or improve healthcare for remote African villages. Technology changes lives. Hearing Corenote speakers share those stories on-stage only intensified that humbling experience.

But you sense that, with its organisational awareness and corporate honesty, Microsoft’s leadership team are as humbled by the power of tech as their audience was. It helps keep us all on the same level, and gives us all a goal to work towards.

Be practical

One of the top highlights, for me, were Ready’s sessions. This is always one of my favourite parts of any event – it’s a chance to connect with colleagues old and new. It’s an opportunity to discuss new ideas and marvel at what we’ve all achieved.

Microsoft Ready’s employee engagement activities, however, aren’t like anything I’ve ever experienced. This isn’t two hours of impact-free blather. The technical sessions that I attended were hailed as some of the most useful, for one simple reason: they impart practical knowledge directly transferable to ‘the real world’.

Should a session not quite live up to expectation, workshop organisers were quick to act. They were receptive to feedback, happy to re-shape the content. One or two even shared contact details for further engagement. In keeping with our theme, they took the practical approach to improvement. And it makes us feel like we’re helping future employees get even more out of these sessions. Together, we’re making a difference (and an even better place to work).

Find the winning formula

The winning formula. That’s what we’re all looking for, isn’t it? No matter what we do, we’re all seeking that oh-so-sweet spot that helps us be more productive and serve our customers better.

At Microsoft Ready, I think I found it.

Microsoft employees and partners are an intensely technical bunch. Now, fuse that mind-set with a healthy amount of commercial awareness. That’s a powerful, almost unstoppable combination; a winning formula that can be fully employed to support our customers’ goals. It creates a flurry of engagement that makes a customer’s journey with us more pleasurable. Our ‘winning formula’, in effect, becomes their winning formula, too.

It’s hard work – but worth it

There can’t be many of us who have put on an international event, bringing together internal employees and external partners. But I’ll let you into a little secret: it takes even more planning than you realise.

Preparation is intense and production value second to none – and I reckon the logistics alone are worthy of a Netflix docuseries about bringing it all to life. Netflix presents Microsoft Ready to Roll, anyone? Because it’s not just about pointing a camera at a well-lit stage. Think of the legions of people offering assistance on the ground. The deployment of transport between venues carried out with military precision. The technical support…

It all made me appreciate just how much all that hard work pays off.

You can say the same about true employee engagement. It doesn’t just happen. You can’t snap your fingers and expect to engage staff, just as you can’t cobble together an event like Microsoft Ready in the blink of an eye. You need to lay the groundwork, draw up plans, know what you want to achieve. But, you’ve really got to put the work in to get the most out.

Trust the people

Microsoft has always put its people first. It’s clear to me that the company has a genuine interest in the well-being of employees. It always has. Now, being at Microsoft Ready really brought that home. I saw, first-hand, how Microsoft gives its people the greatest possible autonomy and control. Who better to take decisions than an experienced individual?

That level of trust in people is inspirational. But I feel there’s more to it than that.

It makes people feel valued. It engages them, and gives them the confidence to sound out new ideas. Microsoft’s stance – not micro-managing, not treating employees like schoolchildren to be corralled and constricted – creates a productive workplace environment where disciplined, effective collaboration between teams is welcomed. The result is overall better engagement.

‘Microsoft is changing the world,’ I like to say, ‘one workload at a time.’

And I mean every workload – whether it’s one of us Microsoft employee or the staff of one of our dedicated partners or customers. This is about a balance between technology and humanity. A balance I believe Microsoft brilliantly handles, as it introduces a fresh, modern workplace culture that connects with employees on a meaningful level.

Find out more

Employee engagement starts with a conversation

Real World Guide to Employee Engagement

About the author

Nas Taibi works as a Solutions Architect in Microsoft. He has over 10 years’ experience working in the Healthcare industry, developing and architecting solutions for Medical Imaging companies (Radiology/Cardiology) and promoting interoperability between healthcare providers using FHIR and HL7v2. Making a difference in the overall patient journey is also a personal goal, so in his spare time, Nas develops healthcare apps and helps other entrepreneurs get started in the healthcare industry.

The post 5 things I learned about employee engagement at Microsoft Ready appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

We’re going to be sharing a story every week for the 12 weeks of summer, showing you how healthcare organisations are using technology to transform patient outcomes and increase productivity. For the fourth blog in our series, Nas Taibi, Solutions Architect, details how, thanks to low-code/no-code services, introducing AI into medical imaging is no longer limited to coding experts.

The shift towards values-based care has seen healthcare facilities seeking low-code and no-code innovations that accelerate operational outcomes and create a financially sustainable care system.

One recent idea that’s garnered attention in the enterprise imaging world is AI augmentation – using machine learning to process, analyse, and interpret medical images. Embedding the technology into enterprise imaging systems has seen improvements to clinicians’ decision-making process and a lighter burden on reporting practitioners’. Using low-code or no-code technology, professionals find they can work quicker and better than before.

But it has another far-reaching benefit: improving people’s health by accurately detecting diseases early.

Picture the scene: machine learning and ultrasound

Imagine a healthcare facility. It’s seeking to use machine learning to automate and improve the prediction accuracy of a foetus’ gestational stage. Traditionally, sonographers have manually measured the biparietal diameter and head circumference using callipers.

The machine learning model analyses legacy ultrasound medical images, with manual measurements taken. It will then closely match the accuracy of the original sonographer’s findings. With AI at their side, the facility can capture this data, then embed it in the ultrasound images, which can be used during training as a reference data point.

Picture the scene: preparing and cleaning the data

Now, imagine an engineering team is prototyping a solution to gather, clean, and pre-process those images. The collected sample data will be used to train and test the model.

The medical imaging system stores the files in Azure’s Binary Large Object storage. Adding each file triggers the Azure Logic App workflow. The message is pulled through and the blob URL extracted, before it grabs the JPEG and JSON from the DICOM image. Next, the system performs an optical character recognition on the image – essentially letting it ‘see’ the photo and pull out metadata.

And, best of all, it’s all performed automatically.

The low-code technology at play

AI tools and framework adoption is growing in the healthcare sector.  Fully managed cloud-based machine learning services can be used to train, deploy, and manage models at scale. Then there’s low code/no code tools.

You don’t need to be a technical expert to use them. There’s no need to learn code.

All you need is access to Azure Cognitive Services, which provide pre-built machine learning models. They’re designed to help you “build intelligent applications without having direct AI or data science skills or knowledge.”

Helping streamline the development process is the low code Azure Machine Learning Studio. It lets you deploy pre-built machine-learning algorithms, then connect datasets that integrate with custom apps.

Used together, these Microsoft services make it easy to transform the workplace without coding skills. You can, instead, focus on delivering improved ROI, a superior experience for employees, and even higher quality care.

Step 1 – Finding the measurements

Healthcare facilities across the country face a similar problem: some ultrasound images are essentially screenshots of screenshots.

While modern machines are able to embed those all-important measurements into the image, these older images include those all-important measurements taken by the sonographer during the scan. The first, step, is obtaining these images.

Step 2 – Pixel extraction and conversion

The next step sees you extract the image’s pixels, then use open-source tools to convert the original DICOM file to JPEG.

Armed with this JPEG, it’s time to run the image through the Optical Character Recognition. Since this is achieved via Microsoft’s smart Cognitive Services, it’s easy to perform.

Watch out though, as this process often turns up personal identifiable information, such as names. Worse, it’s displayed as a banner in the pixel data, so, it becomes imperative to identify and mask this.

Step 3 – Data extraction

Time to unleash those Cognitive Services again. At this stage, you can use pre-built services to easily extract the biparietal diameter and head circumference measurements from your JPEG. These measurements let you calculate the gestational age.

Step 4 –De-identifying the information

A patient’s personal data is often stored in the image’s metadata, as well as the banner. And, in the interests of patient privacy, you’ll need to thoroughly de-identify these images before sending them on for further processing.

For metadata de-identification, the reference value in the Tags is used to check the resulting OCR JSON payload. This information must be masked by identifying the coordinates, width, and height of the bounding box.

Step 5 – Automatically hide information

Now, deploy Cognitive Services once more to detect the bounding box around any personal information. Details like a name or Medical Record Number are masked by a rectangle automatically drawn around  sensitive information.

Step 6 – Ensuring interoperability

Finally, this data needs to be available for interoperability. That’s where you’ll want to use  the Azure FHIR API services. This lets the data to flow to the rest of the downstream analytics systems.

Low code Citizen Developers changing healthcare

By taking advantage of low code/no code services, the healthcare sector finds itself in a better position to innovate. No need for a huge capital investment to hire subject matter experts long before they’re required.

These easy-to-deploy services are creating a new breed of devs, dubbed Citizen Developers; professionals who can now quickly create and automate a business workflow or a cumbersome form-based routine without needing complex coding skills.

By leveraging the power of AI and Azure cloud computing, cleaning, pre-processing, and de-identifying ultrasounds becomes quicker than ever before – and easier, too. Now feed the results into a machine learning system, helping healthcare professionals make quicker diagnoses and improve the all-round experience for patients and employees.

Find out more

Discover what’s possible with Azure Cognitive Services

About the author

Nas Taibi works as a Solutions Architect in Microsoft. He has over 10 years’ experience working in the Healthcare industry, developing and architecting solutions for Medical Imaging companies (Radiology/Cardiology) and promoting interoperability between healthcare providers using FHIR and HL7v2. Making a difference in the overall patient journey is also a personal goal, so in his spare time, Nas develops healthcare apps and helps other entrepreneurs get started in the healthcare industry.

The post 6 steps to using low-code tools to achieve better patient care appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.