A fresh round of layoffs has recently been initiated by the technology major, Microsoft as the company has developed a new medical AI tool that performs better than human doctors at complex health diagnoses.

According to the IT service provider, this latest discovery seems to be creating a “path to medical superintelligence”.

Moving ahead, the Microsoft AI team has  shared this research further demonstrating how AI can sequentially investigate and solve medicine’s most complex diagnostic challenges—cases that expert physicians struggle to answer.

It appears that the Tech company’s AI unit which is led by the British tech pioneer Mustafa Suleyman, has developed a system that imitates a panel of expert physicians.

It can tackle “diagnostically complex and intellectually demanding” cases reportedly.

When it comes to the Microsoft AI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO), it has correctly diagnosed up to 85% of NEJM case proceedings.

This holds a significance as this rate is more than four times higher than a group of experienced physicians. 

Not only that, the MAI-DxO also gets to the correct diagnosis more cost-effectively than physicians as claimed by the company in a blog post.

If you are wondering about the Microsoft AI Diagnostic Orchestrator”, or MAI-DxO for short, it is an AI-powered tool which is developed by the company’s AI health unit, which was founded last year by Mustafa Suleyman. 

Its approach has “solved” more than eight of 10 case studies when it is paired with OpenAI’s advanced o3 AI model.

So, this is specially chosen for the diagnostic challenge noted by the technology giant.

Interestingly, there was a vast difference in the results when those case studies were tried on practising physicians – who had no access to colleagues, textbooks or chatbots – the accuracy rate was two out of 10. 

According to Microsoft, it was also a cheaper option than using human doctors because it was more efficient at ordering tests.

This new medical AI tool “correctly diagnoses up to 85% of NEJM case proceedings,when it is benchmarked against real-world case records.

This rate is more than four times higher than a group of experienced physicians” while being more cost-effective reportedly.

It becomes more impressive as these cases are from the New England Journal of Medicine and are very complex and require multiple specialists and tests before doctors can reach any conclusion.

Microsoft announced “Scaling this level of reasoning – and beyond – has the potential to reshape healthcare. AI could empower patients to self-manage routine aspects of care and equip clinicians with advanced decision support for complex cases.”

While all this is quite impressive, still Microsoft acknowledged its work is not ready for clinical use as the company is of the opinion that this requires further testing as they need on its “orchestrator” to assess its performance on more common symptoms, for instance.

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