Copilot – Your New, Digital Ally
Have you ever needed to create a presentation but didn’t know where to start? Perhaps you’ve found yourself buried under a mountain of emails, struggling to compose your responses, while juggling a hectic schedule? Or maybe it’s been a while since you’ve created a spreadsheet and can’t remember some of the steps or functionalities? If so, you’re not alone. Professionals like you, across various fields, face these challenges daily. But what if there was a solution that could help you manage these tasks effortlessly? Enter Copilot, a revolutionary tool designed to alleviate administrative burdens and enhance productivity. The best part is — it’s now available to you on HM’s Office 365 web portal.
What’s Copilot?
Whether you’re drafting emails, scheduling meetings, generating reports or conducting research, Copilot is here to help. Copilot is an advanced AI-driven assistant (like ChatGPT and Google Gemini), powered by large language models (or LLMs) that leverages the latest in artificial intelligence to provide support across a wide range of tasks. While publicly available sites (like ChatGPT) can pose security risks and are restricted, using Copilot through HM’s Office 365 web portal is permitted, since it’s private and more secure.
HM Chief Medical Information Officer Dr. Jordan Dale, who was recently appointed as HM’s first chief health artificial intelligence (AI) officer stated, “Copilot is a great new tool for Houston Methodist employees to explore the potential of new AI tools, such as LLMs, and determine how they can enable or assist in their daily work. Copilot provides conversational interaction with an LLM to help you outline a future presentation or meeting agenda, draft or summarize an email response or suggest new activities to do with your team to build a skill or comradery across the team. You simply have to craft the question you want to ask (or a prompt) to determine how it might help you!”
How Can Copilot Help Me?
Copilot is here to help you work smarter. One of its most significant advantages is its ability to reduce administrative burdens, meaning the time and effort you spend on routine, often repetitive tasks that are necessary to keep your job running smoothly but don’t directly contribute to the main goals of your work. These can take up a lot of your time and energy, sometimes leaving you less room for more important, meaningful work — especially if one of these tasks isn’t within your area of expertise.
For example, maybe patient care or Epic efficiency is your strength but creating content for a meeting presentation takes you hours. Or perhaps, you’re quick and efficient with most of your day-to-day tasks but struggle with spreadsheets. Copilot can help you quickly create content for that meeting and even provide step-by-step instructions to you on how to build a spreadsheet to support the function you need. You may even find that it delivers quicker, more comprehensive answers to your questions than your typical Google search.
Copilot allows you to plug in your question or request and get quick answers. It will provide suggestions based on your input and allows you to enter follow-up prompts or requests to refine the output even further. The best results are often found after you have a short conversation with Copilot to refine and improve its output — similar to a conversation you’d have with a colleague, as you’re trying to prepare for a new task.
By supporting you with some of your administrative duties, it will help you focus more on the more complex and creative aspects of your work, ultimately enhancing your productivity and job satisfaction.
“While AI can process and analyze vast amounts of data quickly, it doesn’t possess human emotions or experiences,” said Dr. Dale. “The ‘human touch’ is invaluable, and AI can’t replicate your creativity, intelligence, initiative and spontaneity or your ability to make those personal connections and provide vital oversight and validate data. Instead, AI can serve as a valuable tool to support your role, providing insights and recommendations that help you make better decisions and offer more personalized services.”
How Do I Use Copilot?
Before using Copilot, there are some key points to remember.
- It’s critical that you only use this tool while logged into your HM Office 365 account via the web portal.
- You must never enter any confidential information into Copilot, including patients’ Protected Health Information (PHI), Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or any HM proprietary information/trade secrets.
- Always validate the accuracy of any output, and review the accuracy as you take over ownership and use it in your other applications. While Copilot is highly knowledgeable, it may not have access to real-time information or specific proprietary data. It’s always good to verify critical information from trusted sources.
To access Copilot, go to office.com/chat or copilot.microsoft.com, and sign in using your HM credentials. If you log into Microsoft 365 using your HM credentials, click the Copilot icon on the lefthand side. If you use the Edge browser, the Copilot icon is also visible in the top, right.
Then, familiarize yourself with the Copilot interface. You’ll find various options and features designed to help you with different tasks. Simply type your request or question in the Ask me anything field, but remember to be as specific as possible. For example, you can ask Copilot to draft an email, create a presentation, analyze data or generate ideas. Note: It’s important to be as specific as possible in your prompt or request (e.g., “Create an outline for a 20-minute presentation about the diagnostic approaches to chest pain for a group of second-year medical students”). Copilot will provide suggestions based on your input, and you can provide it with follow-up prompts or requests to refine the output even further. Once you’re satisfied with the output, make any necessary adjustments to meet your needs, then finalize it and use it in your document, email or presentation. Remember, always validate the accuracy of any output, and review the accuracy as you take over ownership and use it in your other applications.
Find Out More
“The introduction of Copilot on HM’s Office 365 web portal marks a significant opportunity to explore its potential to enhance productivity and reduce administrative burdens for both clinical and operational roles. By leveraging this powerful tool, you can focus more on what truly matters, delivering exceptional patient care and improving health outcomes,” said Dr. Dale.
We’re excited to hear how Copilot is supporting you in your role and to provide you with more information on using it. We’re planning events to help you learn how to use Copilot, as well as best practices. On Monday, April 14, Dr. Dale will host a virtual Town Hall to discuss Copilot and AI oversight. We’ll also be sending out a survey to understand some of the best practices and use cases you’re discovering and ways we can further enable AI to support you in your role. Stay tuned for more information!
To learn more about Microsoft Copilot, visit the Microsoft Learn website for comprehensive Copilot instructions or review the Copilot tutorial. If there’s a specific task or feature you’re interested in learning more about, just type your question into Copilot’s Ask me anything field, and put Copilot to the test!