Page 48 - Insurance Times September 2019

Let AI do the health

check

A pril last year, a medical device powered by ar- partners and running trials in countries including India, the

US and Japan. “We have been in the early stages of
tificial intelligence (AI) received approval from
the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA),
commercialising the AI components on our platform – pro-
marking a historic moment in healthcare glo-
clinical effectiveness of AI in clinical imaging,” Goldburgh
bally. The IDx-DR, a software algorithm that uses AI to viding access to clients for pilots around evaluating the
analyse images of the eye using a camera, achieved an said.
87.4% accuracy rate while detecting ‘more than mild’ dia-
betic retinopathy, a condition where high blood sugar lev- Many of its clients are thinking of participating in this AI
els damage the blood vessels in the retina. boom, he said, adding that the programme allows clients
to contribute curated data to develop AI solutions in ex-
For IT services firms, which are already developing AI and change for early access to algorithms and to make money
machine language (ML) tools for other uses and industries, off their data.
extending AI and ML capabilities to healthcare is a fairly
non-complex process, and comes with a large upside. “There are various aspects to using tech in healthcare —
Rather than doing it entirely on their own though, these predictive diagnostics, patient experience and connecting
companies are partnering hospital chains and niche play- them with caregivers and the ecosystem of service provid-
ers in the field to acquire the required domain expertise. ers. Adding AI to existing equipment can make the process
For instance, Japanese technology firm NTT DATA Services more efficient,” said Rakesh Barik, a partner at consultancy
tied up with Pune’s Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital last firm Deloitte India. Not too far from Deenanath, home-
year to use an AI-based solution to diagnose emphysema, grown technology services provider Persistent Systems has
a chronic condition of the lungs. been using AI and ML in healthcare, specifically predictive
diagnostics.
Over a sixmonth period, the detection rate of its proof-of-
concept solution turned out to be 170% higher than tradi- The company has partnered with Prashanti Cancer Care
tional systems. “The use of AI to automate insights and Mission to develop a platform that will identify new mark-
tangentially improve the process of care delivery helps ers in patients with triple negative breast cancer, in order
healthcare providers who are under increasing scrutiny for to detect the disease early. Separately, Persistent is think-
quality, often being asked to do more with less time and ing of partnering another customer in the US to create a
resources, and in each case, challenged by the amount of solution for early detection of lung cancer. The mid-tier
digital information that each physician must integrate to software services company is also working with a US
make a clinical decision,” said Mitchell Goldburgh, global startup to develop a tool that will predict the likelihood of
solutions leader for the company’s enterprise imaging and chronic kidney disease in Africans and Asians, and is work-
analytics practice. ing to extend that to people of other geographies.

NTT’s solution leveraged on its two-decade-long experi- The company has made acquisitions in this space to boost
ence in integrating clinical imaging with newer AI tools to its healthcare solutions. Persistent has the requisite tech-
analyse images. The company is currently working with nology expertise, having worked on ML and predictive
48 The Insurance Times, September 2019