The idea is to use machine learning to identify patients who are likely to have additional problems, and then doctors can decide to intervene in advance, he said.

"We think we're just scratching the surface of what can be done using machine learning technology," Mundie said.

Microsoft uses machine learning for a number of its own products, such as its Bing search engine.

He also showed off ways that health workers could use Microsoft's Kinect sensor, currently used in conjunction with the Xbox 360 game console. Kinect lets users move their arms, bodies and voices rather than a game controller to interact with games.

Mundie showed an example where a health care worker could use voice commands to sift through patients to identify those who might be eligible to be entered into a new program. He was presented with photographs of the patients and could choose one in order to see visual representations of clinical data. For example, a chart showed one patient's weight, and Mundie could drag an incident where the patient sprained her ankle onto the chart to see how that incident correlated with changes in weight.