Today, we kick-off the HIMSS 2019 conference and we are excited to share the new capabilities in Microsoft Teams that empower healthcare professionals to provide their patients the best care possible. At HIMSS, we’ll demonstrate how Microsoft Teams can help your healthcare organization improve clinical and operational outcomes and better coordinate patient care - all on the secure and compliant Microsoft 365 cloud.
Please stop by our booth (No. 2500) for hands-on demos and to get all your questions answered by our experts. Not going to be at HIMSS? Be sure to follow @MicrosoftTeams to hear about the latest news and updates from the conference.
Read the full announcement blog here, and read below for a detailed look at the new Teams capabilities.
1. Send urgent messages with priority notifications
Priority notifications alert a recipient to an urgent message on their mobile and desktop devices until a response is received, every two minutes for up to 20 minutes.
Availability: Priority notifications is available in private preview. Interested in joining? E-mail teamsforhealthcare@service.microsoft.com.
Clinicians get repeated notices about urgent messages in need of acknowledgment and response
2. Assign a delegate for when you are unavailable
Message delegation enables a user to delegate messages to another recipient when they are not available, for example while in surgery.
Availability: Message delegation is coming soon.
Clinicians and staff can assign another recipient as a delegate for their messages when they’re not available
3. Integrate FHIR-enabled electronic health records (EHR) with Teams
With this care coordination functionality, hospital and clinical staff on-the-go can securely access patient records, chat with other team members, and even start a video meeting, all without having to switch between apps. Learn more here about the care coordination solution in Teams.
Availability: Private preview. Find out more from our partners here.
By integrating with electronic health records, Teams enables healthcare teams to use a secure hub for coordinating patient care
4. Securely share images with smart camera
Smart camera can interpret different image types such as a document, whiteboard, or index card, and can utilize auto crop for easy consumption. The smart camera experience has been built with Microsoft’s Office Lens functionality and allows for image annotation. Images taken from the smart camera in Teams are not auto-stored to the user’s mobile device, allowing clinicians to share images in a secure and compliant way.
Availability: Available on Teams mobile apps iOS and Android
Clinicians can consult via Teams mobile chat by annotating images and securely sharing with smart camera
5. Plan and create schedules with shifts
With shifts, the schedule management tool in Teams, clinician and staff managers can easily plan and create shift schedules, and health team members can review schedules, swap shifts, or offer shifts from their mobile devices, all in real time.
Availability: Shifts is available on both Teams desktop and mobile. Check out support documentation here.
Create and distribute schedules to your health team. Easily review your schedule, and day and shift notes, directly from your mobile device
6. Deploy consistent teams customized for healthcare with team templates
Team templates let administrators quickly pre-define a team’s channel, install apps, pin tabs, and more so users can focus on collaboration rather than spend time setting up a team and allowing for consistent teams across the organization. The ward template is meant for communication and collaboration within a ward, pod, or department. The template can be used to facilitate patient management, as well as the operational needs of a ward. The hospital template is meant for communication and collaboration between multiple wards, pods, and departments within a hospital.
Availability: Available on Teams. Check out support documentation here.
7. Rich mobile message federation
Native federation will allow users to have the same level of experience when chatting with other users within the same or different tenants/organizations; this includes the ability to have 1:1 and group chats as well as send rich content such as files and emojis.
Availability: Coming soon.
Let us know what you think!
Please try out the new features and provide feedback using the feedback link in the lower left corner of Microsoft Teams. If you have suggestions on how to make Teams better, please submit your idea via User Voice or vote for existing ideas to help us prioritize the requests. We read every piece of feedback that we receive to make sure that Microsoft Teams meets your needs.
- Microsoft Teams Healthcare team
Microsoft
