When COVID19 cases began rising in India, Bengaluru was one of the first cities to report a positive case. It was an IT employee working with a leading tech services company, who had just returned from an overseas trip. In the months that followed, while cases mushroomed everywhere else, Karnataka seemingly had things in control. The lockdown in April and May ensued, and Karnataka was actively working on deploying technologies like AI to control and manage the pandemic.

Pandemic Lessons

At Intel’s all.ai 2020 virtual summit, Dr. Ashwathnarayan, Deputy CM of Karnataka spoke about the experience of managing COVID19 at the frontlines, emphasizing the need to utilize data and AI at scale. Dealing with COVID19, containing its spread and saving lives has been the topmost priority for the government the past 7 months, but in this time, there has been a concentrated effort to harness technologies to manage the outbreak. Karnataka made headlines earlier this year for its track, trace, test, treat and technology approach – the strategy deployed by the state’s COVID19 war room. Moreover, a NASSCOM taskforce comprising Intel, Microsoft, Infosys, SAP Labs, Mindtree, Accenture, Wipro, Fractal Analytics and many others developed a data analysis tool that gathered valuable insights from publicly available data and created dashboards with data on disease spread, hospital availability, drug availability and supply chain patterns. Dr Ashwathnarayan emphasized how systems like these can be created using AI.

Looking Ahead: Precision Public Health A Top Priority

If there’s one thing we can unanimously agree on, its that this disease affects people very differently, remarked the deputy CM. It’s not immediately clear the risk levels of individual patients and the combination of drugs needed to treat each person. Over time it has become evident that those with pre-existing illnesses and conditions like diabetes, hypertension and cancer are likely more at risk of developing serious symptoms. However, seemingly normal people too have been badly affected by the virus. This virus has broadened avenues for precision healthcare, and Dr Ashwathnarayan believes this will determine the future of healthcare in India. In collaboration with Govt of Telangana, IIIT Hyderabad and Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), Intel India will be setting up an Applied AI Research Center to solve challenges in mobility and healthcare.

The health strategy of the future will be to deliver the right medicine for the right person, explained Dr. Ashwathnarayan. Efforts are underway to equip healthcare workers with the right tools to collect data, and eventually this data needs to be integrated seamlessly for mapping out better healthcare and pandemic-like treatment protocols. With the National Digital Health Mission being announced on August 15th by PM Modi and going by the success of a federated IT architecture in health demonstrated by Ayushman Bharat (PMJAY), there is a lot of promise for IT and digital technologies to complete the healthcare continuum and boost primary and rural healthcare in India. This requires a calibrated and coordinated approach with the entire healthcare ecosystem, and an active involvement by technology companies to deliver the desired results.