Policy Push Needed for AI in Indian Healthcare: ISB Study

Hyderabad: There is a pressing need for a policy review to address the gap in adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Indian healthcare. Recommending policy interventions, Indian School of Business (ISB) released a study titled, ‘Understanding the Canvas of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare in India.’

Conducted by the ISB Institute of Data Science (IIDS) and the ISB-Centre for Business Markets (ISB-CBM), the study highlighted that AI has the potential to transform healthcare delivery and can support improvements in clinical outcomes, patient experience, and access to quality healthcare.

To leverage AI, the study recommended incentivizing and standardizing EHR (electronic health record) adoption to create a unified health data infrastructure, investing in the AI workforce through upskilling, and facilitating public-private partnerships to further innovation and accelerate the development of India-centric AI solutions. Establishing clear regulatory frameworks regarding data privacy, accountability, and ethical considerations for AI usage in healthcare should also be taken into consideration, the study suggested.

“AI has the potential to improve productivity, efficiency, workflow, accuracy, and speed, both for physicians and for patients,” said Professor DVR Seshadri, Director, ISB-CBM. He further said, “The right adoption of AI innovations in healthcare with proper policy intervention can ensure timely availability of treatment.”

The roadblocks for AI adoption in India, identified by the study, includes data accessibility, skill gap, high infrastructure and development cost, regulatory uncertainty regarding data privacy and accountability in case of AI errors.

Based on interviews with hospitals, the study found emerging AI applications in healthcare such as disease detection, process optimisation, patient-facing applications powered by chatbots, and treatment interventions by assisting in personalised treatment.

At present, around 4,000 companies in India are developing AI-based solutions for healthcare.