Connected healthcare with artificial intelligence and enabled by Aadhar can help India address the challenges in accessing immediate medical attention. Digital technology can rapidly create predictive models, optimize operational workflow and accelerate development of analytical offerings, said M R Srinivas Prasad, CEO, Philips Innovation Campus(PIC).

The Bengaluru-based PIC housed with 3,000 personnel is working to leverage Union government’s National Health Policy 2017 which recommends the creation of a National Digital Health Authority (NDHA). Along with the use of Aadhar cards, the government is looking to make connected healthcare a reality by establishing an efficient National Health Information Network.

There are multiple devices which are required for connected care. In fact healthcare is transforming from fragmented to networked continuous care to streamline population health management , data integration from disparate points across hospitals, physician practices, insurance and consumer homes. This is where Philips has unveiled its Data Science Platform (DSP) to provide analytics for product development teams to work on analytical models by providing a standardized platform that ensures seamless deployments, he added.

Using Artificial Intelligence, India can lead the world if it could collate the patient records across its hospitals and nursing homes and primary healthcare centres. Now DSP comes with open source tools, frameworks and libraries that data scientists use. There is also a set of pertained clinical models.

 “We have already introduced Mobile Obstetrics Monitoring (MOM) to a hand held ECG which has now morphed into a concept called chest pain clinics. All these are classic examples of reverse innovation which is now being used in a lot of other countries too. We have also have the IntelliSpace Consultative Critical Care (ICCC) solution or the e:ICU launched a couple of years ago to provide the medical assistance in the remote parts of the country. These concepts which have worked so well in India has seen countries like Germany and UK looking for this system. Therefore connected care combined with artificial intelligence will help us accelerate to solve our country’s healthcare problems, said Prasad at the Digital Healthcare Conclave 2017.

The country’s healthcare sector is surmounted by four challenges. First is the accessibility because of paucity of beds reported to be about 30 percent lower than the average requirement. This calls for a need to connect all hospitals to the National Health Information Network.

Second is the insurance coverage which needs to be comprehensive Third is the need to augment awareness to assist patients to manage the rise in non communicable diseases. Fourth is lack of a streamlined use of information technology. This is where the government’s National Health Policy moots for a healthcare information exchange. “ We are now looking to work together with the government to leverage connected healthcare model with artificial intelligence and Aadhar”, said PIC CEO.