New Delhi: A small farmer from a remote village walks into the nearest town’s health clinic. He breathes into a tube connected to a Vionix analyser. This device compares the farmer’s breath with hundreds of millions of other samples from around the world. An AI model, running on the cloud, identifies patterns of disease manifestations in the spectral signatures of the breath sample and instantly provides results on the farmer’s smartphone. It also offers advice on treating the condition using Ayurveda, locally sourced herbs, or Western medicine.
This is a beautiful flywheel of early disease detection that even the poor will be able to afford – which would not have been possible without recent advances in AI. With technologies such as these that our company is developing, any new outbreak of COVID variants or new diseases that the AI algorithms are trained on can be retroactively analysed across the world.
Healthcare challenges
Helping people spot health problems faster is just one aspect of how AI can improve healthcare. India, like the rest of the world, faces immense challenges in delivering high-quality care to its population. Transportation remains a major obstacle; patients often travel for days to reach a hospital. Once there, they might need to stay nearby for days as they undergo a series of tests. Another challenge is the distribution of critical medical supplies – such as blood, vaccines, or drugs – to remote locations. Additionally, there is a significant shortage of trained medical professionals who struggle to keep up with the latest developments in their fields.
AI has the potential to address all these challenges. HD Steth, developed by an Indian company HD Medical, combines AI and integrated ECG to provide immediate cardiac insights at the point of care and directly uploads the visualisations and diagnostics to a smartphone. This stethoscope, which eliminates the need for expensive echocardiograms typically administered by highly trained technicians, is easy to use even outside traditional healthcare settings. HD Steth is approved for sale by the US FDA and has been endorsed by prominent institutions such as the University of California, San Francisco.Drone systems using AI to navigate autonomously are already delivering vital medical supplies in Africa. In India, dozens of drone startups are competing in this delivery market, with AI systems increasingly capable of manoeuvring through complex urban environments an d delivering fragile items accurately.
India solution in global products
For patients in serious accidents, particularly those with head injuries, time is critical. Another Indian company, Qure.ai, has developed a system using AI to automatically triage patient conditions from head and neck CT scans. This allows medical teams to prioritise treatment and surgery much more quickly and accurately. Qure’s technology is also integrated into imaging systems from global companies like Philips and GE Healthcare and includes tools for diagnosing conditions in chest X-rays, such as a screening tool for tuberculosis – a resurgent and increasingly drug-resistant disease.
In almost every field where there is data and a big problem to solve, AI can be transformative. Its ability to process and analyse large datasets far exceeds human capabilities, leading to breakthroughs in fields as diverse as medical diagnostics, environmental science, finance, transportation, and public safety.
Vivek Wadhwa is the CEO and Alex Salkever heads marketing at Vionix Biosciences. Wadhwa has been distinguished fellow and adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Salkever has worked with The Linux Foundation, and Mozilla
