Doctors push for AI in Indian healthcare—from smart ICUs to smarter diagnoses

Summary

Doctors are pushing for AI to not only improve productivity and diagnosis but also address issues including second opinions, faster test results and quicker access to doctors, freeing up their time to see more patients.

Would you be comfortable letting an artificial intelligence (AI) tool listen in to your conversation with a doctor? Or would you trust a scan report written up by a bot?

Doctors in India are driving the entry of AI in the medical mainstream and chains such as Narayana Health and Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd are gearing up to enhance their services with this frontier technology.

AI is being adopted across the board—from consultation and diagnosis to critical care. Doctors are pushing for AI to not only improve productivity and diagnosis but also address issues including second opinions, faster test results and quicker access to doctors, freeing up their time to see more patients.

“In the near future, smart software supported by AI will make smarter diagnoses than many doctors,” said Dr Devi Prasad Shetty, cardiac surgeon and founder of Narayana Health. “Soon, patients will use AI for a second medical opinion rather than visit another doctor. This is because getting a second medical opinion remains inconvenient, cumbersome and expensive.”

Shetty spoke to Mint on why the medical fraternity, like other sectors, needs to upskill using AI tools, which will be critical in their field. Today, AI is used in functions ranging from radiology and critical care to outpatient departments. Bots read reports, detect hidden patterns in image scanning and reduce diagnostic errors by catching minute details.

Hospitals are forming AI teams to work with data scientists, machine learning experts and AI specialists to build inhouse bots for various departments. At Narayana Health, a bot called Medha Scribe is being tested for recording outpatient consultations.

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