Harvard Medical School licenses health content to Microsoft’s Copilot

Harvard Medical School has signed a licensing agreement with Microsoft, granting the company access to its consumer health content on diseases and wellness.

Under the deal, Microsoft will pay a licensing fee to Harvard. The partnership aims to enhance Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant by enabling it to provide medical advice that more closely aligns with what a user might receive from a healthcare professional.

So far, Copilot’s underlying models have been powered primarily by OpenAI. But this agreement is part of Microsoft’s broader push to diversify and reduce its dependence on OpenAI’s technology stack.

Dominic King, Microsoft’s vice president of health, has said the goal is for Copilot’s responses to health queries to more accurately reflect what a medical practitioner would say, rather than generic or superficial answers.

Microsoft declined to comment in detail, but the move strengthens Copilot’s differentiation in the health domain, arguably a high-stakes vertical area where accuracy and trustworthiness matter greatly.

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