Big Data's Healing Touch

How AI and Data Analytics are changing healthcare industry dynamics

- P.B. Jayakumar

1,60,000

This is the number of research papers on covid-19 that have been published in reputed medical journals till now. A majority of India’s main covid warriors, its doctors, have not been able to read even a tiny fraction of these as they are busy fighting the virus. But the reality is that continuous medical education (CME) had taken a backseat long ago, say experts. “India has some 12.5 lakh allopathic doctors, and around 4.5 lakh non-MBS doctors. except for the 1520 percent in metros and tier-1 cities, most are unable to stay up to date with innovations in their field,” says Bhagwat Dhingra, former CEO of Unichem laboratories and an industry veteran. Doctors usually update themselves through CME programmes organised by pharmaceutical companies and annual meetings of their associations. Another source is interactions with medical representatives. “If I remember correctly, using the Reliance cyber cafes, Apollo Hospitals telecast a live surgery connecting specialists in 60 centres. That was one of the first digital CME programmes in India,” says Dhingra. That was 10-12 years ago. Things did not change for years after that.

CME is not the only area where India’s healthcare sector is lagging. A total of 6,000-7,000 hospitals across the world are performing robotic surgeries compared to less than 100 in India. When it comes to data, most non-corporate hospitals keep hard copies of files in dusty storerooms. Lack of digitisation also plagues drug distribution and delivery.