Intelligent Healthcare: Bridging the gap with Digital Health and AI | nasscom

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Intelligent Healthcare: Bridging the gap with Digital Health and AI | nasscom

Intelligent Healthcare: Bridging the gap with Digital Health and AI

The evolution of healthcare industry is being shaped by the rising influence of advanced technologies. The shift towards integrated care that pivots on the promise of digital health has become key to enabling better outcomes around service delivery, and patient experience. The result is data-driven healthcare solutions, individualized approaches to healthcare delivery such as in therapeutics and treatments and improved public health through prioritizing rural healthcare and expanding access to affordable and quality healthcare globally.

 

What is Digital Health, and what is its future?

“Digital Health is the field of knowledge and practice associated with the development and use of digital technologies to improve health. Digital Health expands the concept of eHealth to include digital consumers, with a wider range of smart devices and connected equipment.” – World Health Organization (WHO).

Digital Health refers to using various technologies, including telehealth services, health information technology (IT), and mobile health (mHealth) to improve communication between doctors, and patients throughout the healthcare systems. Digital Health captures everything from electronic patient records, remote monitoring, connected devices, digital therapeutics, and more. It embraces digital technologies such as big data, AI/ ML, and the Internet of Things (IoT) to collect, share, analyze, and use data on patient outcomes to help healthcare professionals make informed decisions and improve care.

Digital health is not a new phenomenon. It goes back to 2005 when the World Health Assembly (WHA) adopted a resolution to establish an eHealth strategy for WHO, focused on the key aspects of defining eHealth, governing and implementing its principles and standards, establishing a global observatory for eHealth, and supporting capacity building in member states to adopt eHealth. Since then, over 120 WHO member states have been able to create a national digital health policy or plan. Fast forwarding, in 2023, the WHO and India G20 Presidency announced a joint effort, the Global Initiative on Digital Health (GIDH) to help in the rollout of the WHO’s Global Strategy on Digital Health for 2020–2025. This is a critical step to consolidate, prioritize, and strengthen digital health initiatives.

 

India at the forefront of Digital Health and AI

The below shows key government initiatives to push the case for digital health and AI forward.

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Fig. 1 – Government of India initiatives to promote Digital Health and AI in healthcare

The Covid pandemic brought out the need to expand focus from pilot-driven digital health solutions to establishing a robust digital health infrastructure. This coupled with the rising healthcare costs, shortage of healthcare sector professionals requires a shift in mindset in how the healthcare services should be delivered, and how the current boundaries of personalization, efficiency, and patient centricity and experience be pushed to the next level. And that’s where the transformative role of AI in healthcare comes into the picture. The next wave of transformation in the healthcare industry is being shaped by the rise of Intelligent Health, wherein the sector must rise beyond digital, to create an intelligent health ecosystem to deliver accurate and high quality, affordable, and accessible services.

In 2018, WHO partnered with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), setting the stage for the Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health (FG-AI4H). This partnership led to the formation of the Global Initiative on AI for Health (GI-AI4H) that was launched in July 2023 under the WHO, ITU, and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). 

 

Identifying Indian healthcare sector gaps

India is ranked 145th among 195 countries on the Healthcare Access and Quality (HAQ) index, plagued by the “Iron Triangle” of Access, Cost, and Quality. Indian healthcare organizations are struggling to balance amongst the three interlocking factors of the iron triangle – cost, quality, and access, as focusing on one factor, such as enhancing quality, negatively impacts the other two. For instance, cost-reduction efforts may come at the expense of quality or access, similarly, quality healthcare may not be accessible to remote locations and may not be affordable.

Currently, the Indian healthcare sector faces the following key challenges:

Accessibility Gap

  • Rural-Urban Healthcare Divide – There was a nearly 80% shortage of surgeons, physicians, gynaecologists, and paediatricians at community health centres in rural India as of March 2022 according to government data.
  • Inadequate Healthcare Infrastructure – India has a shortage of healthcare space and beds, ventilators, and testing capacity and currently facing a deficit of 2 billion square feet of healthcare space to meet the needs of its population of 1.42 billion.

Unaffordability Gap

  • Low Insurance Penetration
  • High Out of Pocket Expenditure (OPE)

Quality Gap

  • Lack of skilled healthcare professionals
  • Health Care Quality Indicators – India significantly lags behind other OECD countries on OECD Health Care Quality Indicators that cover life expectancy, infant mortality, insufficient primary care, disease-specific indicators, etc.

 

How AI-enabled solutions can reduce the critical gaps in Indian healthcare?

Integrating AI can significantly impact patient care, and public health, streamline operations, and enhance diagnostics, medical skilling, and self-care.

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Fig. 2 – The promise of AI for Indian healthcare sector

 

Conclusion

Digital health care has gained momentum worldwide, and India stands at the forefront. Some of the government initiatives have helped catalyze digital health in India. However, with the rising AI in healthcare opportunities, the boundaries of digital health are getting pushed and the future of digital health is shaping up fast. Now is the time to act for the global and the Indian healthcare industry to prepare for the “Intelligent Health” imperative.

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