Despite the strong performance of Microsoft’s medical AI MAI-DxO in testing, which included models from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta, and xAI, clinical barriers remain.

In the real world, ordering medical tests costs money, so Microsoft tracked the tests that the AI system and human doctors ordered to see which method could get it done more cheaply. Not only did MAI-DxO far outperform doctors in landing on the correct diagnosis, but the AI bot was able to do so at a 20% lower cost on average.

The tech giant poached several top Google researchers to help build a powerful AI tool that can diagnose patients and potentially cut health care costs.