On May 6, we had the opportunity to celebrate AI in Healthcare: Creating the Future of Health, an event held at Microsoft Ibérica’s headquarters in Madrid that drew nearly 300 attendees.
The session brought together leading professionals from the sector, including experts from La Paz University Hospital and Microsoft, who shared their perspectives on how AI is transforming the healthcare industry by improving diagnostics, personalizing treatment, and optimizing healthcare management.
We also took the opportunity to introduce our new Online Master’s in AI for Health, developed in partnership with Microsoft and co-created with experts from La Paz University Hospital, designed to help healthcare professionals keep pace with this wave of technological change. Speakers at the event included:
- Pau Garcia-Milà – Co-CEO and co-founder of Founderz
- Alberto Granados, President of Microsoft Spain
- Natalia Escobedo, Executive Director, Public Sector Lead at Microsoft
- Miguel López-Valverde, Councillor for Digitalization of the Community of Madrid
- Paco Estella, Microsoft Healthcare AE Spain
- Laura Born Navarro, Technology Strategist, Regional Government & Healthcare at Microsoft
- Alba Temes, Technology Strategist at Microsoft
- Ana Gómez Galindo, Deputy Director of Management and General Services at La Paz University Hospital
- Juan José Ríos Blanco, Attending Physician, Autoimmune Diseases and Internal Medicine at La Paz University Hospital
- Jorge Álvarez Troncoso, Internal Medicine Specialist at La Paz University Hospital
- Antonio Franco, CEO of Luzán 5
Event opening: an institutional take on AI and health
The session opened with Natalia Escobedo, Executive Director, Public Sector Lead at Microsoft, who welcomed attendees. Paco Estella, Microsoft Healthcare AE Spain, then highlighted Microsoft’s commitment to transforming the healthcare sector through advanced technology.
He also pointed to Microsoft’s investment in developing health-specific solutions, with more than 6,000 professionals dedicated to this area worldwide and technology deployed across more than 140 regions.
Paco emphasized the importance of making technology more human-centered to improve both the patient experience and the efficiency of healthcare professionals. He explained how technology, and AI in particular, is transforming healthcare by reducing physicians’ administrative workload and giving them more time for direct patient care.
Miguel López-Valverde, Councillor for Digitalization of the Community of Madrid, took an institutional approach, underscoring the critical role technology plays in improving efficiency in the public sector.
From his perspective, healthcare professionals are already advanced users of technology, and AI acts as a key enabler that simplifies paperwork and lets professionals spend more time focused on caring for people.
He also stressed the importance of applying artificial intelligence to professionals’ clinical needs, streamlining processes and improving care and management across the healthcare sector.
The future of AI in health: Microsoft’s vision
Pau Garcia-Milà, co-CEO and co-founder of Founderz, opened his talk by noting that although AI only began seeing widespread use two years ago, its impact on healthcare goes back much further.
For Pau, AI is and will continue to be a technology that is critical to treating many diseases, and he made the case for AI as an everyday tool that professionals use as part of their daily work.
Laura Born, Technology Strategist, Regional Government & Healthcare at Microsoft, underscored the company’s mission to improve the lives of healthcare professionals in a sustainable way.
She explained that technology, and especially AI, plays a supporting role for healthcare professionals in their daily work. She also pointed to the strong convergence between AI and healthcare, highlighting the importance of responsible AI in developing personalized solutions that improve how professionals interact with data.
Alba Temes, Technology Strategist, Business Applications at Microsoft, discussed how AI can put the patient at the center of care while streamlining the administrative work that affects physicians’ efficiency.
In this segment, we learned about practical applications of virtual medicine and recommendation systems that improve staff management and reduce costs. One example is Project InnerEye, which can cut by up to 90% the time an experienced physician needs to process scans before a patient begins radiotherapy.
The success story of La Paz University Hospital
In this part of the event, Ana Gómez Galindo, Deputy Director of Management and General Services at La Paz University Hospital, described how artificial intelligence is streamlining hospital management and improving patient care.
Using machine learning algorithms to forecast patient volume in the emergency department allows for more efficient management of staff and resources and improves the patient experience by reducing wait times.
Juan José Ríos Blanco, Attending Physician in the Autoimmune Diseases and Internal Medicine Unit, spoke about how AI is changing medical practice, giving doctors more time with patients and less time on administrative tasks.
He highlighted specific AI applications in remote patient monitoring and medical image analysis, which are transforming diagnosis and treatment across a range of specialties.
Jorge Álvarez Troncoso, Internal Medicine Specialist, addressed the impact of AI on personalizing medical treatment, highlighting its ability to process vast amounts of data to optimize therapies.
In this part of the event, we saw how techniques such as 3D printing and robotics, combined with AI, are enabling more precise surgical procedures tailored to each patient’s anatomy at La Paz University Hospital.
This success story showed how artificial intelligence is improving the efficiency and effectiveness of medical services and reshaping the interaction between healthcare professionals and patients, making medicine more human and more personalized.
Why AI training matters for healthcare professionals
To close the event, Antonio Franco, CEO of Luzán 5, emphasized the importance of AI training to meet current and future challenges in the healthcare sector. He noted that although AI is changing the practice of medicine, the biggest barrier is often resistance to change among professionals.
In his view, training needs to be flexible and efficient, with content that is current and relevant, covering not just technical skills but also transferable skills.
Pau Garcia-Milà then took the floor again to stress that building the right level of trust in AI is essential, and that only through ongoing education and training can the technology be implemented responsibly.
In his view, and in Founderz’s view, AI is not meant to replace healthcare professionals. It is meant to be their assistant, giving them more time for hands-on patient care and less time on administrative tasks.
The event closed with remarks from Alberto Granados, President of Microsoft Spain, who said that daily use of AI by healthcare professionals can reveal its true impact and help integrate this technology even further into healthcare.
Do you work in healthcare and don’t want to fall behind on AI and other technology advances? Check out our Online Master’s in AI for Health!
