Microsoft signs up Providence Hospital chain as Cloud, AI customer

Microsoft Corp. signed Providence St. Joseph Health as a customer of its Azure and artificial intelligence tools to help the hospital chain track electronic health data such as surgery outcomes and cancer therapies.

Providence, which operates hospitals in seven U.S. states, will shift data and applications from its own data centers to Microsoft’s cloud as part of the five-year agreement. The company’s 119,000 doctors and caregivers will also get access to Microsoft’s Office productivity software and its Teams chat service.

Microsoft is wooing health-care and retail companies to try to catch Amazon.com Inc., the largest provider of cloud computing services.