(Yicai Global) Sept. 15 -- Indian urbanites take easy access to healthcare for granted. Not so its countryfolk, yet that is changing through Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and investment. IBM and Microsoft are collaborating with major Indian healthcare players just itching to remake their sector.

Second only to China’s, most of India’s over 1.3 billion-strong population lives in villages. “[I]n rural India, some 840 million people are challenged by obtaining the healthcare they need. For the average citizen, just getting to a medical appointment might require a day-long journey,” per IBM’s website. This has opened a gaping divide and demand for an effective healthcare system has ballooned, The Yuan, an AI-centric forum on a quest to make AI also shorthand for ‘All-Inclusive,’ reported on September 8.

India’s towns and hamlets rely on outdated medical practices, and this must change. AI, ML, and predictive analysis have precipitated a metamorphosis in healthcare worldwide, per The Yuan report. Other global tech titans are also toting their wares to India’s healthcare market to test its waters.

New York-based IBM’s Watson supercomputer deploys AI to bridge India’s healthcare gulf. Cancer cases will reach 1.57 million in India by end-2025, per the Indian Council of Medical Research, so the nation’s healthcare needs a booster to ride this wave.

IBM teamed with Bangalore-based healthcare chain Manipal Hospitals to use Watson to help cancer diagnosis and treatment at camps in the countryside.

IBM also joined with Kolkata-based iKure, a startup delivering primary rural healthcare services.

Affair of the Heart

“Sujay Santra, Founder and CEO, iKure, and Julie Lockner, Executive Director, IBM Data and AI Offering Management detail efforts to identify high-risk cardiac patients in India by combining wearable data and historic patient data,” according to IBM.

“Thanks to a 2019 project with IBM, iKure now has an AI platform based on pre-built models available through IBM Cloud Pak for Data to analyze patient data captured from devices, hospital visits and home-based interactions... This is one strategy iKure employs to help specialists better manage care for patients...”

Redmond, Washington based-Microsoft will also hunker down and splash some cash in India. It linked with Chennai-headquartered Indian healthcare entity Apollo Hospitals to detect, diagnose, and treat heart disease -- a major killer -- using AI.

Hyderabad-headquartered eye health services provider LV Prasad Eye Institute also uses Microsoft Intelligent Network data analytics to predict visual regression rates and impairments for eye operations. Microsoft’s Maitri, a customized bus, tours the country’s remote southern areas to offer vision rehabilitation to teach rural India about eye-wellness.

COVID-19 shined the spotlight on the importance of digitalizing healthcare, and Microsoft is buying local firm Nuance Communications to develop AI software to help clinics capture patient data and integrate it with electronic health records.

The Indian healthcare industry is on track for more major AI-powered transformations in the coming decade. With IBM and Microsoft infiltrating India and capitalizing on its modernization cravings, doors are now open to other technological advancements. Rural India's healthcare underdevelopment will hopefully soon be only a memory.

Editor: Kim Taylor

Yicai Global is pleased to announce its cooperation with The Yuan (https://www.the-yuan.com) and looks forward to future feature articles from it authored by luminaries of the ilk of Hippo. AI founder Bart de Witte and the many other leading lights in the AI sector who are its regular contributors. The Yuan provides an open community with the aim of averting the emergence of bias and social inequities and inequalities arising from uneven access to AI and, as such, its philosophy closely aligns with Yicai Global's own stance.