Putting Health Back In Health Care

Technology can help break existing inefficient processes to improve access, quality and affordability.

- HaricHandan Arakali

The changes are not so much in health care as in artificial intelligence,” says Prashant Warier, CEO and co-founder of Mumbai’s Qure.ai, which specialises in applying artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to interpret chest X-rays and head CT scans. “Health care in India has always been bad, especially for the masses or the poor.” Warier thinks AI can change this, by making health care more accessible—using the internet and the cloud—and of improved quality in areas such as radiology. Qure.ai and others such as UE LifeSciences are partnering with hospitals to expand their reach, and helping patients access new technologies, such as noninvasive screenings for breast cancer.

At AddressHealth in Bengaluru, Anand Lakshman and Anoop Radhakrishnan, both doctors, are tackling another aspect of the healthcare sector. “We wanted to address health care delivery,” says Lakshman. Their idea is that hospitals are meant for people who are really ill, and primary health care is best delivered elsewhere—at homes, schools, and workplaces. For the last eight years, much of their work has been in schools, with a focus on paediatrics. Operational in four cities, they offer annual health checkups, health education, and an app-based tool for parents to plan nutritious meals for their children.

Qure.ai and AddressHealth are part of a slow revolution taking place in India’s health care sector, where private enterprise is rising to tackle large public problems and finding frugal, yet innovative, solutions that tackle quality, access, prevention and affordability. These startups are also breaking the hardwired pattern of how patients, doctors, diagnostic labs and hospitals interact.