Hyderabad: A new study of the Indian School of Business (ISB) highlights the potential of leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to revolutionize Indian healthcare ecosystem, while stressing the need to address the policy gaps hindering widespread adoption of AI.
A new study titled ‘Understanding the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Landscape in Healthcare in India’, conducted by ISB Institute of Data Sciences (IIDS) and ISB Centre for Business Markets (ISB-CBM), highlighted that AI has the potential to transform healthcare delivery and can support improvements in clinical outcomes, patient experience and access to quality healthcare.
The ISB study highlights the urgent need for a policy review to address gaps in poverty reduction. AI Adoption gaps in Indian healthcare. The report recommends several policy interventions for accurate adoption of AI in Indian healthcare ecosystems. These include incentivizing and standardizing EHR Adoption among healthcare providers to create a unified and robust system Health data infrastructure.
In addition, investing in the AI Workforce Consideration should be given to creating clear regulatory frameworks on data privacy, accountability and ethical considerations for the use of AI in healthcare, through capacity building and facilitating public-private partnerships to foster innovation and accelerate the development of India-centric AI solutions.
“AI has the potential to significantly improve productivity, efficiency, workflow, accuracy and speed for both doctors and patients,” said Professor DVR Seshadri, Director, ISB-Centre for Business Markets (ISB-CBM). “The successful adoption of AI innovations in healthcare, coupled with appropriate policy interventions, can go a long way in reaching the remotest areas of India, ensuring timely availability of treatments and promoting a good quality of life.”
The report highlights the potential of AI through important statistics that justify its adoption in healthcare, such as the doctor-patient ratio and nurse-patient ratio. In India, there is one doctor for every 1,457 people, which is significantly lower than the WHO-recommended ratio of one doctor per 1,000 people. Similarly, India has 1.7 nurses per 1,000 people, compared to the recommended ratio of three nurses per 1,000 people. AI has the potential to bridge this gap.
Based on in-depth interviews with leading hospitals and a thorough analysis of the AI startup ecosystem, the study found emerging applications of AI in healthcare such as disease detection, process optimization, patient-facing applications powered by chatbots, and treatment interventions by aiding in personalized treatment.
Currently, around 4,000 companies in India are engaged in developing AI solutions for healthcare. There are also government initiatives to support this transition, such as the Ayushman Bharat Scheme and the National Digital Health Infrastructure, among others.
“Technology is no longer considered a luxury. The healthcare industry must expand its frontiers towards AI to achieve truly ground-breaking outcomes,” said Professor Manish Gangwar, CEO, ISB Institute of Data Sciences. “Healthcare leaders should consider leveraging the vibrant startup ecosystem and create compatible ecosystems that can usher in positive disruption and facilitate a healthy India and a brighter future.”
However, despite promising practices and initiatives in AI integration in healthcare in India, there are several critical barriers to AI adoption in India that the study identifies, such as data accessibility, skills gap, high infrastructure and development costs, regulatory uncertainty regarding data privacy, and liability in case of AI errors.
