Introduction

India’s healthcare system is characterized by inequalities in distribution, lack of proper infrastructure and trained clinicians and low government spending. Thus, the country with more than a billion of population equipped with internet connection and smartphones provide unique opportunities for innovation of sustainable and scalable healthcare technologies. In the recent years, with the help of AI and related innovative technologies, the sector is gradually witnessing strong growth and investments both by public and private sector.

Given this background, NASSCOM’s latest report deep dives to understand and answer some of the important questions such as the challenges faced by the sector, the impact of the ongoing pandemic on the sector, the possible AI opportunities across the healthcare value chain and how it can transform the entire healthcare sector in India.

The report points out that the main challenges faced by the healthcare sector are low doctor-patient ratio coupled with lack of skilled resources resulting in diagnostic errors and lack of stable pricing and policy environment. To add to this, the COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated the existing challenges thereby straining the infrastructure available. As far as role of AI in transforming the sector is concerned, the report highlights that AI can help in timely epidemic outbreak prediction, remote diagnostics and treatment and optimize health resource allocation. Interestingly, the report provides a range of recommendations for the government, service providers as well as the healthcare enterprises. Some of the recommendations are creating national digital health infrastructure, establishing COEs to collaborate on AI research, customize AI solutions to suit demand side needs, extensive collaboration with supply side for executing AI models and defining risk and governance framework.

Relevance of the Report

At a time when the pandemic has taught us the need to identify possible outbreaks and be well-prepared to combat any kind of health emergencies, the report comes in handy to provide a clear and holistic view of the possible use of AI to transform the healthcare sector and how the adoption of AI can be increased and prioritized in the sector. The most important part is the fact that the report considers the various challenges that the sector at present has and how AI can be used to counter those and revolutionize the sector and its entire value chain.

Key Takeaways

• The healthcare sector is one of the largest sectors in terms of both employment and revenue
• Despite the impressive growth of the sector, there are challenges galore – cost, quality and accessibility of healthcare services
• The COVID-19 pandemic has created an urgency to adopt latest technologies including AI
• It is estimate that data and AI in healthcare can add USD 25-30 billion to India’s GDP by 2025
• Top areas for AI implementation in the sector are patient care, operations and R&D
• Need to create a strong win-win partnership of healthcare organizations with the right service providers to unleash the full potential of AI