Harvard Medical School Licenses Consumer Health Content to Microsoft for AI Use in New Deal

Harvard Health Publishing, a division of Harvard Medical School that publishes consumer health resources, has agreed to allow Microsoft to use its content on specific diseases and health topics to train its artificial intelligence tool, Copilot.

The new agreement is part of a larger push to expand Microsoft’s artificial intelligence offerings, according to the Wall Street Journal. The data will be part of the company’s initiative to improve responses to healthcare queries in its Copilot AI chatbot.

HMS Spokesperson Laura DeCoste confirmed the agreement and wrote in a statement that “this collaboration with Microsoft aligns with HHP’s goal to provide credible health information across a range of platforms.”

HHP publishes health-oriented articles directed at the public, on topics like sleep habits, healthy eating, and pain relief. All articles are reviewed by Harvard scientists and researchers. The publication had an earlier agreement with Microsoft dating back to 2022, though that separate agreement provided Microsoft with custom content.

DeCoste confirmed that Microsoft paid HHP to license its content.

Soroush Saghafian, the director and founder of the Public Impact Analytics Science Lab at Harvard, said the agreement provides a way for HHP to make their information more accessible and useful to the public.

Saghafian’s lab studies the use of AI in hospitals and medical organizations. He said training AI models on articles and studies vetted by HMS can help address accuracy issues in early AI healthcare applications.

“Right now, the AI tools are not good for providing medical advice. They have large amounts of error,” Saghafian said. “A lot of times this could be really dangerous.”

HHP regularly licenses and provides custom content to companies. HHP is a “trusted partner” of Apple, Google Health, and Pfizer according to its website.

HMS, like many other schools at Harvard, has taken steps to adapt to and implement AI in its academic programs. Harvard received a grant last week to research an AI platform that helps medical students with issues of implicit bias and emotional connection with senior patients. Researchers from HMS have also published findings relating AI to a range of topics including drug efficacy and cancer treatment.

“My hope is just that, after these tools are developed, they are tested carefully,” Saghafian said, adding that AI chatbots should recommend users to ask medical providers directly when asked questions on which they are not trained.

Health information in HHP articles that were once only directly accessible from their website or with a subscription to paywalled content can now be shared with Copilot and its 33 million users.

“With these types of agreements, they can make their information, their articles, more accessible and more essentially available to the public,” Saghafian said.

–Staff writer Abigail S. Gerstein can be reached at abigail.gerstein@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @abbysgerstein.

—Staff writer Ella F. Niederhelman can be reached at ella.niederhelman@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @eniederhelman