Here's why Indian diagnostic companies are investing heavily in AI-powered platforms

Indian diagnostic sector is witnessing an increased investment in Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven technologies. Majority of diagnostic companies are either collaborating with health technology companies or adopting technology innovations to scale up their services.  

A driver for increasing revenues, AI adoption in diagnostic space is also helping in improving diagnostic services for non-communicable disease such as heart attack, cancer, diabetes and stroke. The recent entrant is Apollo Hospitals, the integrated healthcare services provider, who, on Wednesday, announced collaboration with ConnectedLife, a Singapore-headquartered health-tech Company to integrate its AI-CVD tool with ConnectedLife’s digital solutions for wellness, condition management and other health-focused applications.  The AI-CVD tool can predict the risk of cardiovascular disease.  

ConnectedLife partners with Fitbit to create compelling wearable-based solutions for wellness, condition management and other health-focused applications. The ConnectedLife platform captures and analyses Fitbit wearable devices and patient-reported data to provide health and wellness insights for individuals and connected population health stakeholders.

Apollo said that this collaboration will empower healthcare providers with the tools to predict the risk of cardiac disease in their patients and initiate intervention early enough to make a real difference.  

“Technology can truly make a positive impact by equipping doctors with the right tools to fight against non-communicable diseases. The heart risk score for the Indian populace is an example of how preventive healthcare can use technology to accelerate prevention and reduce the disease burden,” said Dr Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals Group.

“We will expand the collaboration to other NCDs to prevent and reduce the NCD disease burden. This collaboration will further strengthen our research for co-development in Clinical AI, which would not only calibrate our existing models but pave way for better understanding of health risk scores,” she added.

Diagnostic companies also admit that with investments in the AI, their brand names, services and business revenues have been scaling up.

Similarly another brand that is leveraging the use of AI seamlessly across its platform is the Mumbai-based healthcare company Metropolis. As per its promoter Ameera Shah, the company has improved its brand and service discoveries across its digital platforms through the use of AI.

“We have been offering an omnichannel experience to all our customers across all digital touch points like Website, App, Chatbot, WhatsApp and IVR. We have upgraded and launched our Mobile Patient App by adding new features like quick home visit booking, track phlebotomist, rating of phlebotomists, test recommendations and so on,” said Shah, who is Metropolis' managing director.

“We have built various robust digital platforms to engage with our stakeholders such as B2B partners, aggregators and doctor partners. On the business impact front in FY 22, we have witnessed 173% increase in digital users YoY, faster growth in home visit revenue, 151 per cent increase in website views YoY and 61% increase in digital driven revenue,” she added.

Similarly, SRL, the noted Indian diagnostic chain, has also partnered with GOQii, the smart-tech-enabled preventive healthcare company that is focusing on 'digital therapeutics' for disease and lifestyle management programmes. The strategic partnership between GOQii and SRL Diagnostics will extend to where the latter will be the diagnostic partner for all tests booked by the patient through the GOQii app and specifically the HbA1c tests for the GOQii Diabetes Care programme.

Since rising cancer cases are a major concern in India, health companies into cancer care are also similarly looking at AI-powered solutions for early diagnosis for better treatment outcomes. HealthCare Global Enterprises Ltd (HCG), an Indian player in specialty healthcare services focused on oncology, has recently started using artificial intelligence-powered technology (SigTuple's AI100) to automate the manual microscopy (screening) process across its network. The healthcare company is using AI-powered screening solutions for cancer detection and disease management.  

The company has said that as manual microscopy is still the standard in diagnosing several critical disorders like cancers, infections, etc., in the absence of a pathologist at site in laboratories outside urban areas, these samples need to be shipped to central reference laboratories for review. Apart from the logistic challenges and associated delays in turnaround times, there is also limited expertise available for providing high quality diagnostics at remote locations.

“AI-assisted digital scanning technology has indeed emerged as a game-changer in cancer care,” said Dr. B.S. Ajaikumar, Executive Chairman, Healthcare Global Enterprises Limited (HCG).

Digital scanning technology makes it possible for pathologists to review samples remotely, without having to ship them to the reference laboratory, as the digital conversion can happen at site.

“SigTuple started in 2015 with a singular goal – to make quality healthcare more accessible, more accurate and more affordable. AI100 was built to solve the problem of digital pathology with that aim in mind,” Tathagato Rai Dastidar, founder & CEO of SigTuple, said.

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