Stephen Dawson on
Unsplash
Artificial intelligence (AI) is disrupting every field from cyber security to speech recognition. AI is one such technology which is bound to pervade every platform with the explosion in digitization of every platform. Healthcare is one such area that is flooded by data and which is yet to be understood. Many people are realizing this and they are trying to solve this challenging problem with the help of AI. India is a hub of information technology with large work force working in this field. According to PwC, India is suffering from shortage of physician, less than 2% of hospitals in India are accredited and healthcare system is not available uniformly. Despite of Govt. of India allocation of Rs 61,398 crore for healthcare, challenges are epidemic of disease such as cancer, malaria and tuberculosis where there is huge gap between patient and healthcare providers. Lack of healthcare facility in remote areas and want of awareness are two major problems which India is facing today. Market of AI based healthcare system in India is expected to grow by 40% by 2021 which will be worth INR ~431.97Bn.
“Anything that could give rise to smarter-than-human intelligence – in the form of Artificial Intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, or neuroscience-based human intelligence enhancement – wins hands down beyond contest as doing the most to change the world. Nothing else is even in the same league.”
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Sigtuple, an AI based healthcare startup founded by Rohit Pandey, Apurv Anand and Tathagato Dastidar, building various platforms for analyzing and visualizing medical data. Mantahan, a platform by Sigtuple helps in analyzing visual medical images efficiently. It helps in analyzing the peripheral blood smears, urine microscopy, semen, fundus & OCT scans and chest x-rays. Sigtuple has secured $16-million in Series C round. NIRMAI (Non-Invasive Risk Assessment with Machine Intelligence) Health Analytix, an AI based solution, is working in the field of breast cancer. They are working on the cancer screening tool for accurate and automated diagnosis by using thermal image processing and machine learning algorithm. NIRMAI has developed two tools Thermalytix which is computer aided diagnostic engine powered by AI and SMILE (Software with Machine Intelligence for Life Enhancement) tool which is a web interface for uploading demographic information along with thermal images of patients. NIRMAI was founded by Geetha Manjunath and Nidhi Mathur and the company has the total funding of $6.1 M. Logy.AI, an AI based company co-founded by Priyanjit Ghosh working on providing diagnostic services for cervical cancer diagnosis.
“For AI to add the most value and for patients and physicians to embrace it, it needs to support, not supplant, the patient-physician relationship, AI will be most effective when it enhances physicians’ ability to focus their full attention on the patient by shifting the physicians’ responsibilities away from transactional tasks toward personalized care that lies at the heart of human healing.”
Steven Lin
India has the maximum number of tuberculosis (TB) cases in the world with 2.74 million reported cases every year. According to Global Tuberculosis Report 2017, approximately 4,23,000 people died due to tuberculosis (excluding HIV). Delay in diagnosis, treatment and wrong therapy is three major factors responsible for mortality due to TB. Qure.ai, an AI based company has created deep learning technology (qXR) for analyzing X-rays and radiology reports. Qure.ai was founded by Pooja Rao and Warier and company is backed by the funding of $30 M by Fractal Analytics. Artelus (Artificial Learning System) co-founded by Pradeep Walia, Raja Rajeshwari, Lalit Pant and Vish Durga applies deep learning technology for pattern recognition in existing medical records for helping doctors with prognosis, diagnosis and treatment. Predible Health, co-founded by Abhijith Chunduru and Suthirth Viadya and seed funded by Unitus Seed Fund, applies deep learning and cloud computation and helps doctors with decision making and accurate detection and characterization of hepatic lesions. Approximately, 2.25 million people are living with cancer in India. 7,84,821 people died due to cancer in 2018 in which 4,13,519 were men and 3,71,302 were women. There are not enough medical centers which can deal with it and screening system is not well developed. Onward Health, an AI based company co-founded by Vikas Ramachandra and Dinesh Koka, uses medical imaging and machine learning to localize spatial location of cancer. While working on for better prognosis and prediction of patient outcome, company has used the machine learning algorithm for combining multi-modality images such as radiology with proteomics and genomics based measurement and extracted images from digital pathology images. Approximately 30 million people are diagnosed with diabetes in India with 8.7% of diabetic age group falls between 20 to70 years. Google has teamed up with Indian doctors and has developed AI based model that can detect diabetic retinopathy with by analyzing retina scans. Orbuculum was founded by Pranav Gangwal and Faiz Ahmad, works on disease prediction by using AI based technology on genomics data. In the future, market of AI based healthcare system will grow with more fast pace. Govt. programs such as Startup India will further encourage people to come up with innovative ideas for solving healthcare problems using AI based technology.
