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Apr 27 2026
Artificial Intelligence

Health Systems Can Get Started With Microsoft Dragon Copilot Today to Improve Clinical Workflows

Two experts share their perspectives on how healthcare organizations can take advantage of the AI assistant.

Documentation overload, clinical burnout and rising operational costs are just some of the challenges healthcare organizations face today. This can have a major impact on clinician satisfaction and retention.

One way health systems are hoping to address these concerns is with the help of artificial intelligence–powered tools that can streamline clinical documentation so that clinicians can return their attention to direct patient care, focusing on establishing trust and building relationships rather than clicking through administrative tasks on a screen.

Last year, Microsoft launched Dragon Copilot, a unified platform approach to clinical workflows with an AI assistant to automate tasks, streamline documentation and gather information.

DISCOVER: Achieve productivity gains and streamline workflows with Microsoft Dragon Copilot.

Now, more than 100,000 clinicians use Dragon Copilot as part of their work, according to Microsoft, with updated features such as role-specific support for physicians, nurses and radiologists; integration with certain applications; and expanded language options. Mount Sinai Health System and Tampa General Hospital are just a few of the organizations that have rolled out the solution in their workflows.

During the 2026 HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition, HealthTech caught up with two Microsoft Dragon Copilot experts to hear about what problems it solves, how it integrates with the electronic health record, how it can be used across departments and tips for implementation success.

How Microsoft Dragon Copilot Raises Clinician Satisfaction

Clinicians are familiar with technological change affecting their workflows. From the adoption of electronic health records systems to using smartphones for clinical documentation, they’re poised for the next best solution that can support their demanding work.

“Dragon Copilot is what we’ve all been waiting for,” said Kristi Bubrig, vice president of strategic alliances and enterprise growth at eDist. She is also known as “the Dragon Lady” for her expertise.

“What we’re finding in healthcare today is that providers are faced with unique challenges, and one of the things that Dragon Copilot does best is give them their life back, so they get their most valuable asset: their time,” Bubrig said. “And we’re finding it is a game changer for being able to focus on your patient, to see them, to do what you went into medicine for, which is to relate to your patients and make them well, not to be your own transcriptionist.”

Dragon Copilot is particularly relevant in the healthcare space with the combination of ambient clinical documentation capabilities sharpened by Nuance Communications (which Microsoft acquired in 2022) and the tech giant’s long-established security stack. These features make it stand out from the explosion of AI offerings over the past three years, Bubrig said. 

4.15 minutes

The amount of time saved on documentation per patient reported by a sample of Cooper University Health Care clinicians in fall 2025

Source: microsoft.com, “Cooper University Health Care enhances patient care with Microsoft Dragon Copilot,” Dec. 15, 2025

Clinicians can now shift their focus from writing notes to reviewing them as captured by Dragon Copilot, which results in “better documentation, more accurate coding, higher provider satisfaction and an improved patient experience — and that, in turn, results in better ROI and impacts for the bottom line,” said Ray Abji, Microsoft senior sales brand manager at CDW.

It helps that Dragon Copilot sits natively within the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare ecosystem, Abji added, leveraging Microsoft Entra ID for secure identity and access.

“Now, what that translates into is Azure for trusted infrastructure and Microsoft 365 for compliance and governance. It interacts with Microsoft Fabric, which organizations can use to de-identify data for clinical and operational insight, while Copilot Studio enables healthcare-specific agents for triage, medical support and workflow automation,” he said.

Although most of the focus has been on how Dragon Copilot can support clinicians, Bubrig said it’s meant to support departments across a healthcare organization.

“Primary care teams use it to manage high visit volumes and reduce after-hours documentation. Surgical departments rely on it for structured procedure documentation and postoperative summaries. Administrative teams, they can streamline referral letters, after-visit summaries and other essential operational coordination,” Abji added.

READ MORE: Solve healthcare burnout with Microsoft Dragon Copilot.

Ensure Microsoft Dragon Copilot Success in Healthcare

If healthcare organizations feel overwhelmed about widespread implementation of Dragon Copilot, Bubrig advised them not to go on the journey alone. 

“Don’t just buy the solution and think it’s going to work itself out. Having the right deployment team to adjust the workflow, to make your providers more comfortable, to see how all those things tie in together with your administration and your front end, your back end, is all going to lead to what we’re after, which is better patient care,” she said.

Abji agreed, adding that Dragon Copilot performs best when it’s intentionally configured to match how clinicians address documentation within their specialty and their EHR, setting standards for the documentation process, providing templates and compliance requirements, and involving physician champions to campaign for the solution within their organization.

“One of the things that’s great about Dragon Copilot is the way that Microsoft approaches its deployments and its rollouts and technology. It does that by listening to the providers to make those changes. So, what’s next is what our providers tell us they want next. What’s next is, now we're into nursing care. What’s next is, what do they need the most to make that quality of patient care and their quality of life better? That’s what I would say is next,” Bubrig said.

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