Can we Improve our Healthcare System in India using AI?
Healthcare has been a far-fetched reality for most of us Indians. The growing population and increased migrations are creating an imbalance in terms of the requirement and availability of doctors and health facilities.
Since the cost of living has been increasing, the affordability of healthcare facilities is decreasing. It isn't always necessary for healthcare to cost us a fortune. If we can find a solution that caters to a larger population and is affordable, we can reduce the rate of mortality and increase the response to an action.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used as a corrective technology that can provide a better solution to this problem. To fill the gap between available healthcare resources to what is required, AI can help in many ways. AI can provide a solution that can act as a primary layer for the underprivileged to get health consultancy.
With growing connectivity with mobile phones and affordable data, the masses can be benefitted by bringing social change and affordable health care. The hindrances of affordability and accessibility can be addressed by introducing Artificial Intelligence (AI). Computers can be made more useful and accessible by understanding complex principles and making it easier for human understanding and usage.
Healthcare is emerging as one of the largest recipients of the AI revolution globally but has a huge dependency on investment. If the appropriation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is extended in healthcare, the scientific community will be able to adapt it to deliver research outcomes as well as services. The outcomes of precision medicine and the quality of services will enhance with the timely prediction of ailments.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) when used to its full potential, in India, the following shortcomings can be controlled:
- The shortage of qualified healthcare professionals and services like qualified doctors, nurses, technicians, and infrastructure can be overcome.
- Non-uniform accessibility to healthcare will reduce. Since physical access continues to be a major barrier to preventive and curative health services, as well as the disparity between rural and urban India, this will drastically reduce.
- Poor and marginalized are hit the most due to the unaffordability of healthcare services. With the appropriation of AI in healthcare, it becomes affordable.
- Awareness and access to healthcare services will drastically increase.
- Since most of the healthcare facilities are limited to tier 1 and tier 2 cities, with the coming of AI in healthcare, the absence will be nullified.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions in healthcare can expand scarce personnel and lab facilities. AI can overcome the barriers to solve the obstacle of accessibility. The other technological advancement that can be made accessible by AI is early detection, diagnosis, and treatment to the 1.38 billion people of India. The following can be the potential use cases of AI in Healthcare:
1. Preventive Healthcare: Such an AI-based app is already in use that helps people to work proactively work on their daily lifestyle to improve overall health. AI-based apps either on smartphones or wearables, can record and store data and provide visualization of such health data in a uniquely easy way that is appealing for individuals and easy to follow. We have been seen as transformation and concern about healthcare by the users of wearable devices. Such devices work on a cognitive coaching system that provides required advice regarding fitness, sleep, and nutrition, etc.
2. Timely Disease Detection and Prevention: There is a fair chance that the AI-based wearable can give a timely indication about upcoming ailments- like the irregular pattern of breathing, changes in blood pressure patterns, SPO2 level, or faster reduction in weight all indications of disease related to heart, diabetes, and in some cases cancer.
Historical data of mammography of breast cancer patients can be used to train the AI models which can pinpoint indications of breast cancer in cells or tissues at pre-stages. Such detections can make breast cancer a curable disease with intervention before the disease strikes. In recent times, Covid -19 spread patterns have been modeled to give advance notice to authorities to take timely action on prevention. This is too early and time for more deep research but by using deep learning models, future governments will be able to pinpoint the spread patterns of viruses of the future as we do now in case of rains and cyclones.
3. Helping Medical Fraternity in Diagnosis: In many cases, doctors today make the diagnosis based on their experience. While many times they are correct but we also read news about wrong treatment due to the wrong diagnosis. While doctors use pathological reports, x-rays, MRIs, and other advanced tests to diagnose the ailments, the conclusion is based mostly on their experiences. The AI model can be trained on unstructured data to get classification or disease patterns in terms of demography. At the same time, structured data can be used as a regression problem where a precise decision about the disease. Combining such models, doctors can arrive at an evidence-based diagnosis. This will help to bring a better treatment plan for a life-threatening disease(s).
4. Operational Support based on AI for Healthcare System: AI-assisted chatbots, conversational AI tools can take health cases to the loner and remote population. This will be affordable also and can be subsidized with advertisers. The development of prosthetic arms or glasses assisted by AI models can greatly help the disabled population. In general surveillance and access control too, AI-based video analytics systems can make operations much easier.
India will continue to face challenges related to healthcare and to overcome these challenges, it becomes rather imperative to combine healthcare with the advancement in Artificial Intelligence (AI). This simply means that India’s strategy of combining AI with healthcare has to be balanced for both local needs and accessibility. This will require large-scale transformational intrusions, especially led by the government, by joining hands with the private sectors for providing support.
