The Digital Health Summit conducted by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) on July 26 featured a discussion on how artificial intelligence (AI) can disrupt the health tech industry. The speakers participating in the discussion were Gaurav Agarwal, Co-founder of TATA 1mg; Dr Geetha Manjunath, founder of health tech startup NIRAMAI Health Analytix; Ankit Maheshwari, Chief Technology Officer & Founding Team Member at Innovaccer, a health data cloud platform; and Dr Rajiv Chhibber, Vice President – External Affairs at medical equipment manufacturer, Sahajanand Medical Technologies Pvt. (SMT). Using AI to address the dearth of healthcare professionals: Maheshwari said that the use case he has been seeing is not on the clinical side but rather in reducing the administrative burden present in the healthcare ecosystem. “All the other work that they [medical professionals] were doing, which is taking them away from the patient, that can be done through the use of AI,” he said. He pointed out AI could act like the first responder; it could be the first to interact with a patient and re-route them to the right healthcare professional based on the problems that they are facing. Sharma agreed with Maheshwari and added that AI could be used specifically in providing mental health treatments. “[The number of] psychiatrists and the number of psychologists are very, very few as compared to the number of people who are suffering from this mental health burden and pandemic,” he said. How AI can help in the diagnosis of medical conditions:…
