NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN HEALTH INFORMATICS & VIRTUAL REALITY

NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN HEALTH INFORMATICS & VIRTUAL REALITY

DATE- 30^th & 31^st August, 2019

VENUE- Convention Centre, New Campus, TISS, Mumbai

On Friday morning, the Convention Centre of the reputed Tata Institute of Social Sciences opened to the audience comprising of Hospital Management students from various colleges, CEOs/Medical Directors, Doctors and other stalwarts from the Healthcare industry.

The morning session of the first day of this 2-day conference started with the Inaugural session. The inaugural session presented the following dignitaries on Dias who set the motion for the forthcoming speakers to the right tune.

Prof. M. Mariappan (Chairperson at Centre for Hospital Management, TISS), introduced the concept of AI and the reason for having this conference as to provide a platform for the exchange of information on the latest trend in AI and how the trends are helping achieve Sustainable HealthCare Development.

Mr. Paul Carter (Acting British Deputy High Commissioner): He talked about the UK-NHS being the World’s largest Health Service Provider and how the new innovations and technology, particularly the concept of AI is improving accuracy, delivery and outcome of healthcare services. Excerpts from his talk are:

-        Report says that with efficient use of AI, about 150 million US dollars can be saved by 2026 which implies that 20% of unmet Healthcare needs can be addressed.

-        UK Government is about to put up multimillion pounds AI Lab and invest 250 million pounds to collaborate with world best academic and technology companies to work towards research in AI about new tools and further innovations.

-        UK then PM Theresa May and Indian PM Mr. Narendra Modi met last April to discuss on improving accessibility and quality of public healthcare services worldwide.

-        As UK Government’s commitment towards improving patient outcomes worldwide- UK Govt. will invest 1 million pound to bring UK’s best AI companies to India and deploy their solutions in collaboration with Govt. of India at the hospitals and primary Health centres across the nation. The primary focus will be on diagnostic AI that can help tackle certain deadly disease in India. It will especially guide India in its Ayushman Bharat Health reforms and move towards universal health coverage.

Mr. Joy Chakraborty (COO, P.D. Hinduja Hospital and Chairman of Confederation of Indian industry): He discussed about the extreme shortages of demand and supply in the healthcare infrastructure and the need to integrate technology in healthcare and concluded that artificial intelligence technology can come as a saviour in this situation. He talked further about how some of the fantastic AI application developed in United Kingdom has been successfully adapted in the NITI Aayog in the rural population in diagnostics and one of the major area is eye problems detection.

Guest of honour- Dr. Mridula Phadke (Sr. Advisor, NHRM & Ex VC MUHS)- She stressed on the fact that though Artificial intelligence is extremely helpful but it cannot replace Natural intelligence in any sphere of Healthcare. Artificial intelligence should always be taken as a support tool to the natural intelligence of Doctors and other Healthcare professionals and then only we can be able to optimally use the benefits provided by AI.

The session one of day one commenced with a talk by Dr. Gaurav Thukral who is an Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Health Care at Home Pvt Ltd. He talked regarding accessibility and affordability at HOME CARE. He also talked regarding healthcare involved in West in India. He gave information regarding profitability of hospitals with Ayushman coming in and market squeezed and return on capital has gone down. He talked regarding Lab people, physiotherapist at Home Care, ICU at Home, Portable modified crash card, Coala Life, Aifloo, AI usage in Home Healthcare, AI to detect radiological interventions and Dr. Mahajan Lab Delhi. The other topics he discussed was AI usage in home healthcare; taking away the mug work of doctors, Post hospital care through Artificial Intelligence, K-Arogya, Lemonade Health- video consultation USA, Kronicare, ADA Health Berlin- personalized diagnostic- example specialized chemotherapy, Sensitize health UK, Virtual beds and virtual nursing assistant, Accuhealth- chronic care management and AI on INTEL. Challenges in Artificial Intelligence according to his talk was – trusting in technology, Algorithm Bias, Data security and Data privacy.

Dr. Ujjwal Rao, Senior consultant at Elsevier Clinical Solutions talked about Intelligence knowledge-based solutions. He emphasized on Service first which included Empathy, Ethics Excellence and Equity. He talked about how ROI means different to different people. To nurses and infection control teams, ROI means ‘Risk of Infection’. To most of us burdened by home loans, car loans and education loans, ROI means 'Rate of Interest’. But as per him, ROI means ‘Radius of Information’. From this he meant- “radius of information” as a measure of the circle of knowledge. From all this knowledge, there are things that you know and things that you don't know i.e., you know what you know and you know what you don't know. However, with an explosion in the rate of medical information growth coupled with the slow adoption of research findings into clinical practice, more often than not, physicians don't know what they don't know. This is what is known as knowledge variability. He also said that in order to truly address new challenges appearing as our entire healthcare delivery model evolves, technology needs to be evidence-adaptive and Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) are the most pertinent answer to the vast and destructive problem of variability in care delivery. 

The next session began with Dr. Prashant Deshpande giving us an overview on Artificial Intelligence for Employee Wellness. He started the discussion with the evolution of HR systems later went to convergence and types of wellness and wellbeing to performance. He also discussed about the prominent players in the employee wellness platforms like Thrive, Life doper, Sriff, Motive fit bliss; Types of AI used in wellness (Tangible and Embedded) and IBM Watson health. He finally discussed with the audience about the R-Swasthya.

Mr. Naresh Duble is Head Asia - Commercial Excellence & Field Marketing Development at Armstrong World Industries addressed some of the challenges as follows:

·         Noise levels have doubled in the last few years.

·         Errors in comprehending instructions and dispensing increase as noise levels go up.

·         Noise cause up to 30% of patient awakenings.

·         Sounds gets transmitted between rooms and from the floor above.

·         Healthcare facilities require huge capital investments. In the current financial climate, a quicker return on investment is critical.

·         Hospitals look antiseptic.

·         Glare from strong lighting is a major source of discomfort for patients and staff alike.

·         Hospital acquired Infections are a primary concern. They must be controlled.

From these challenges, he stressed upon challenges related to acoustics in hospitals by introducing the services provided by Armstrong Ceiling Solutions.

Mr. Pratyush Sharma presented us an overview of clinical AI applications related to AI for mamo reporting, AI for MR Prescription where he practically showed us the conversion of Doctor’s Handwriting into the digital format and also the categorisation of medical coding shown while typing in the digital format, AI for treatment response in which he discussed about the Care area Persona care episode and care life cycle. He stressed on the use of  AI to help Doctors save lives and presented the Tricog AI engine  with AI Engine stackup and work flow, system level performance and the tricog today.

Day two of the conference began with paper presentations on research papers related to Artificial Intelligence in healthcare.

The next session began with Information of healthcare& health propogation and awareness Dr. Randeep Singh. In his speech he mentioned how better patient care starts with digitization and documentation. Doxper is helping doctors and hospitals digitise to improve their operational, clinical and patient engagement outcomes (digitized case sheets using a smart pen and encoded paper). As most of the physicians are still using pen for writing the prescription and they are in need of a user friendly and cost‐effective entry point for digitization. Doxper is the solution. They use “zero behavior change approach” which means physicians won’t be forced to type. He mentioned how AI is taking the cut of workflow in a healthcare system. He says in this way Doctor Patient relationship can be strengthened, time consumed will be less, handwritten errors of the physician can be easily avoided. Doxper is also piloting in different geographies like Nigeria and Bangladesh, and is also actively working with partners in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Brazil, and South Africa, to start operations early next year. 

Mr. Chitti Babu, the global head, payments technology solutions at Unimoni spoke about the Future of Payment Solutions, Cross Border and Healthcare Payments”. In his speech he mentioned about Digital age, technological innovations like Growing patient financial responsibility poses challenges and opportunities for healthcare organizations. Pragmatic hospitals are looking to the digital transformation of payment in sectors outside of healthcare for ingenuity when it comes to helping patients pay for their services. How digital payments can help the patients in a way of time saving. And they can easily do their payments online and get treated they don’t have to wait in a long queue for clearance. In Healthcare systems digital payments are a priority these days.

Mr. J. Vijayananda is Fellow, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Philips Research, Bengaluru spoke about Data Analytics, AI & Applications in Medical Technologies”

In his speech he mentioned about the Microsoft Cloud like the healthcare industry needs a lightning fast AI platform. AI and data analytics are paving the road to better healthcare.

1. Mining Medical Records and Devising Treatment Plans

2. Assisting in Repetitive Jobs and Future Prediction

3. Blending Physical and Virtual Consultations

4. Medication Management

5. Finding the right talent in Healthcare 

6. Helping People Make Better Health Choices.

Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) created ‘ICU Intervene’, a machine-learning approach that collects a significant amount of ICU data ranging from medical to demographic details. Medical Virtual Assistants (MVA) collect and compile a patient’s medical and demographic details. M-health apps help people track their health and notify patients about upcoming appointments. AI can prove to be more accurate and helpful in such scenarios. It can read CT scans and medical reports to provide a diagnosis of similar images stored in the database.

The next session commenced with a Dr. Senthil Kumar speaking on Robotics, VR & Navigational Surgery where he mentioned that Technologies like robotics, VR and 3D printing are making once complex, high-risk surgeries now commonplace and standard, “The outcomes of this technology provide patients a lower risk of infection during and post-surgery, less time recovering and better health outcomes. These advances are about patient quality of life.” There is a near future in which doctor’s 3D print anatomical models to plan procedures and educate patients about what will be done to them, then go into VR to simulate important steps of the operation and finally, use robots to perform the procedure with pinpoint accuracy. VR brings users into an immersive video game-like 3D world through a wearable screen, AR is meant to lay visual data over the real world when a user dons transparent glasses. In the future, entire procedures will be digitized, and doctors will be able to communicate with the instruments that surround them through voice, gesture and gaze. 

Mr. Sarrat Guram talked about Artificial Intelligence for health payer where in he mentioned as in the other sectors, AI will yield major efficiencies in claims handling and other operations, including improved fraud, waste, and abuse detection. That value will be retained by payers. AI-driven enhancements to population health management (PHM) are likely to keep patients healthier and reduce claims. In addition, improved efficiency and clinical decision making, reflected in reduced hospital readmissions, for example, will create savings.

Ms. Anagha Choukhande talked about Artificial Intelligence, Business & Advanced Analytics for Healthcare Providers where As the organizations go over the analytics, they get the bigger picture of the patient’s condition, and eventually, they are able to give precision driven care and treatment. This eventually leads to end-to-end process optimization and increased competitiveness. It is important to know what are the tools that can extract information from the data to generate value and enjoy operational, financial and clinical insights. There are genome analyzers and other analytics tools in the market that help in understanding the facts, and eliminate unwanted/useless details to extract only what’s needed. The end result of this is better clinical outcomes for the patient.

Mr. Harish Rijhwani, a, senior delivery manager at CITIUS TECH. spoke about Data Sciences and its applications in healthcare.The session started after a refreshing lunch break. The speaker spoke about how big data is in healthcare refers to the enormous volumes of data that is available for healthcare providers post the advent of digitization in the sector. Systematic analysis of these data sets can provide actionable insights and help in taking strategic decisions on matters related to the healthcare system. It helps to create comprehensive and holistic views of the patient, consumers, and physicians.

Mr. Anil V. Vaidya, Professor and Head-Information , Management Area, SP Jain Institute of Management and research addressed on Data Analytics and Security Enhancements with Applications of Health Management. There are various challenges associated with each step of handling big data which can only be surpassed by using high-end computing solutions for big data analysis. That is why, to provide relevant solutions for improving public health, healthcare providers are required to be fully equipped with appropriate infrastructure to systematically generate and analyze big data. An efficient management, analysis, and interpretation of big data can change the game by opening new avenues for modern healthcare.

The concluding session of the two day conference was a panel discussion on AI Promises & Pitfalls with Dr. Senthil Kumar, Dr. Muthu Singaram and Dr. Nandgopal Gopinathan. They discussed how , most of the progress has been in what is often referred to as “narrow AI”—where machine-learning techniques are being developed to solve specific problems, for example, in natural language processing. The harder issues are in what is usually referred to as “artificial general intelligence,” where the challenge is to develop AI that can tackle general problems in much the same way that humans can. Many researchers consider this to be decades away from becoming reality. The briefing concluded with a set of issues that policy makers and business leaders will need to address to soften the disruptive transitions likely to accompany its adoption.