Microsoft Aims to Connect Patient Health Records in the Cloud

Microsoft Corp. is releasing a service to help health-care companies move vast amounts of patient data to its cloud and connect with other related systems in a bid to offer clinicians, individuals and researchers a more comprehensive view of patient health.

The tool, based on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and a national standard for exchanging health records, will let disparate health systems talk to each other, for example hooking up patient records with pharmacy systems, fitness devices and others more seamlessly.Health care lags behind some other industries in moving data to internet-based storage, and while health records have mostly gone ...