Microsoft has chosen its Cambridge UK research lab – in its 20th anniversary year – to pioneer digital healthcare breakthroughs leveraging its bleeding edge AI, machine learning and cloud computing capabilities.

The Seattle technology giant has set up a new healthcare department at its city nervecentre in CB1 designed to engineer digital solutions that will take massive financial and physical strain off the NHS.

Trained doctor and data scientist Iain Buchan has been taken on to spearhead the venture, according to international media sources.

Hi-tech monitoring of patients’ symptoms, astute data management and digital harvesting of key information about populations and disease trends will accelerate the drive towards genuinely personalised medicines.

It is yet another ‘first’ for Cambridge in the global growth story of Microsoft Research. Bill Gates decided on Cambridge for the corporation’s first research lab outside of the US back in 1997 – ahead of China which many followers of the company thought would be first choice.

Business Weekly was in on the opening under brilliant inaugural MD Roger Needham in 1997 when the lab started with only three staff. Now it has over 130 researchers and engineers and is currently hiring interns, researchers, postdocs and engineers to further grow headcount.

Its move from its original home at the university’s West Cambridge site to the showcase CB1 development has also spurred a steady flow of technology transfers into the Microsoft Corporation parent business.

The corporation has nursed a long-held ambition to use its advanced technology solutions to transform healthcare. And as Lab director Professor Chris Bishop has said: “We have just scratched the surface of what technology can do for us. We are continuing to push the boundaries of computing to create ubiquitous technologies with the potential to transform our lives.”