COVID-19 has been declared by WHO as a global pandemic. With high transmissibility, a fatality rate greater than 1% and no vaccine or therapy for immediate use, the pillar of pandemic management has been containment and mitigation. However, digital health technology under the umbrella of AI can help facilitate pandemic strategy and response in a more controlled way. Big data and AI have helped facilitate COVID-19 preparedness and the tracking of people, and so the spread of infection, in several countries. Given this backdrop, the session highlighted the use of such latest technologies in battling the pandemic and the challenges that lies ahead. It was attended by eminent medical professionals from the country as well as bureaucrats and technology experts. The session was moderated by Dr. Rajendra Kumar, Additional Secretary, MeitY, who asked the panelists to consider five points while giving their viewpoints on this topic: a) AI for diagnostics, b) AI for personalized prediction, c) Use of AI for drug discovery and repositioning for pandemic, d) challenges in leveraging AI and e) enhancing healthcare capacity for leveraging AI.

The session was marked by the presence of renowned cardiac surgeon Dr. Devi Shetty, Chairman and founder of Narayana Hrudayalaya Limited. In his keynote speech, Dr. Shetty mentioned that if we want healthcare to be affordable, accessible and safer, we need to remove pen and paper from the doctors, nurses and technicians and replace them with mobile as it is the only device that they constantly look into even when on the move. In a very interesting manner, he explained how his hospital have utilized data analytics and AI to treat COVID patients. With the help from a start-up, the hospital, which now manages 400 COVID patients, has been successful in remotely monitoring COVID patients and sharing the data real-time with the doctors and nurses who strategizes and plans the moves based on the data thus collected. The tool, known as MEDA, also has the capability to assign a risk score of developing a cardiac arrest by a patient and also help in inventory management and supply chain analysis. Apart from this, the hospital has also been using robots to shift blood samples from different points so as to minimize the spread of infection amongst the healthcare professionals in the COVID ward.

While expressing her thoughts on leveraging AI amidst the pandemic, Dr. Gargi, Sengupta, Director, IBM Research India and CTO, IBM India highlighted the three basic challenges that the healthcare system is currently facing. They are a) complexity of hybrid data, b) a reliable information architecture to clean, collect and analyze the data and c) instilling trustworthiness in the AI models so that they become more dependable.

Mr. Vikram Dendi, GM Chief Product Officer, Microsoft Health Next, talked about his journey in Microsoft from investing in this technology so as to tackle this pandemic situation. He specifically highlighted the Anitgen Map project which collects blood samples, carries out immunosequencingand maps T-cells’ response to the COVID virus through AI algorithms and machine learning and makes the data available to everyone for further research and analysis.

Dr. Jitendra Sharma, MD & CEO, Andhra Pradesh Meditech Zone, very interestingly pointed out that even though many hospitals do have the system of maintain electronic healthcare records, it lacks interoperability due to absence of standardization. He was also of the view that while interventional knowledge in machines is based on retrospective knowledge, there is still no way to factor in prospective knowledge and one cannot gather much knowledge from that information.

Mr. Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, CIO, Apollo Hospitals, stressed the need to ensure that the benefits that AI is bringing to the healthcare sector is sustainable and not a one-time phenomenon. By doing so, not only can future outbreaks be prevented but also cost can be minimized to a large extent.

Dr. Harpreet Singh, Scientist and Head Division of Biomedical Informatics, ICMR, presented how simple data analytics had helped in optimizing testing capacity and that they have recently started using AI to predict morbidity and mortality rate across locations. However, they are still faced with challenges such as diversity in data platforms, access to data generated by ICMR programs, integration access of data sources and an integrated research platform. 

Ms. Ashwini Bhide, Additional Municipal Commissioner, Mumbai Municipal Corporation, demonstrated how they actually used AI to manage the pandemic in Dharavi, Mumbai. In their initiative they were partnered with several entities such as Wadhwani AI, EY, PwC, Google, Zoom, Uber, qure.ai and many more to provide their expertise on pro bono basis. AI based screening was used for chest X-ray to help rapid screening and monitor recovery program.

To sum up, the panelists did agree that the right infrastructure for using AI is important as without it no correlation can be drawn. Also, interoperability will be the key to ensure the varied use of the data and above all ruthless execution and adoption of the technology is extremely crucial so that we are well prepared for future pandemics or similar outbreaks.

Image by Anastasia Gepp from Pixabay