Microsoft has announced a pair of new features for Azure Cognitive Services, the company's AI-based platform. At the all-virtual developer conference, Microsoft says Cognitive Services is getting Text Analytics for Health and Document Translation.
Azure Cognitive Services is a platform that allows developers to tap into APIs and add them to apps leverage speech, search, and other AI tools. Importantly, developers can tap into the service without needing to learn master machine learning abilities.
Looking at the new features, Document Translation does exactly what it says in the tin. Users can translate documents without losing the format. This tool was first introduced in preview for Azure Translator back in February.
When a batch is received, the new Azure Translator feature takes each individual document from the source. It then learns the format and then takes relevant information such as textual content through a parsing technique.
It then performs an AI-driven translation from the original language to the chosen target language. Finally, Document Translation puts the document back together to maintain the original layout and formatting.
Text Analytics
The next new feature for Azure Cognitive Services is Text Analytics for Health. This is a tool for developers that see insights for medical data. The API for this feature was first brought in preview to Cognitive Services back in January 2020. It is now entering general availability:
“Text Analytics for health is now generally available with Text Analytics in Azure Cognitive Services. It enables developers to process and extract insights from unstructured medical data. Unstructured text includes doctors' notes, medical journals, electronic health records, clinical trial protocols and more. Another new feature of Text Analytics is Question Answering. Now in preview, Question Answering helps users find answers from a passage of text without saving or managing any data in Azure.”
