Microsoft and Novartis Team Up to Tackle Multiple Sclerosis

Microsoft and Novartis are joining forces against multiple sclerosis (MS), the autoimmune disease that affects millions of people worldwide.

Using Microsoft’s Kinect, they have developed a tool called Assess MS that can monitor and evaluate a patient’s movements to determine if the disease is progressing or not—quantifying a patient’s status has been a top challenge with MS.

When Microsoft released the Kinect system for playing Xbox video games about five years ago, little did it know it would be parenting with a healthcare company. For years, Novartis has been trying to find more consistent ways to quantify whether the treatments it is developing for multiple sclerosis are working, but assessing whether a patient’s symptoms are stabilizing or getting worse is complicated.