I am a child of the 1980s, and have been in the unique position of observing the world through the evolution of technology. When I was growing up, there was a waiting list for even landlines. Email accounts were only for the nerds. And then came smartphones, a giant leap―a single, hand-held device that could be our window to the world. These devices and technological developments have truly changed our lives in unimaginable ways and have irreversibly changed the way we live.
India led the way in using technology as an enabler in business and in governance, and every sector transformed itself. Technology became an imperative and a differentiator.
With my ringside view of health care, I witnessed the way technology was impacting every aspect of our services―be it clinical delivery or relationship management.
Apollo Hospitals was at the forefront of this change. We had always been pioneers in medical technology, responsible for many firsts. The MRI, CT scan, PET-CT scan, surgical robot, proton beam therapy system were all first brought to India by Apollo, and resulted in significant improvement in care delivery and clinical outcomes.
Sindoori Reddy
We were the first health care institution in India to introduce a single health care identifier (UHID) for every patient, which they can use across the network. This ensured transferability and portability of personal medical records, a key component of providing consistent care. Today, this model is being rolled out nationwide under the National Health Stack, which will mark a pivotal change in India’s health care delivery system.
We adopted advances in internet and computer early, too. In 2000, we launched the country’s first telemedicine network, which took super-specialty care to remote areas of India and the world. Today, we have more than 700 telemedicine installations in India and around the world, and have completed over 20 million tele-consultations.
Today, radiology services can be provided real-time from anywhere in the world, and artificial intelligence adds a layer of accuracy to diagnosis. Our connected care platform and e-ICU frameworks enable nursing homes to connect to advanced ICU settings and clinical pathways, ensuring that advanced critical care protocols are available to all patients.
One of the most compelling use in our efforts to integrate AI in health care has been our development of the cardiac AI risk score. A simple score, which is integrated into all our preventive health checks, now signals patient risk for a cardiac event over the next five years. This is groundbreaking because it is a prediction, and with the right interventions and lifestyle modifications, individuals can ensure that this risk is managed, and the adverse event averted.
In 2020, right around the time the pandemic hit, Apollo Hospitals accelerated the launch of its digital health care platform, Apollo 24/7. The platform offered vital specialist and super-specialist care through video consultations on the mobile phone during the pandemic, thereby making sure important medical advice was available in a timely way even during lockdown. The online pharmacy delivered life-saving medication directly to consumer doorsteps, and critical diagnostic tests were also provided at home. The app has since grown to provide chronic condition management services and insurance options online, while also being a digital gateway to the entire gamut of Apollo services offerings in physical locations.
Minimally invasive and robotic procedures have also gained a lot of traction over the last five years. Apollo Hospitals has the largest number of robots and performs the highest number of minimally invasive and robotic procedures in the country. These techniques offer patients shorter hospital stays, minimised scarring and pain and faster recovery.
Generative AI has clearly emerged as the next leap in transformational technology. It is having a significant impact in health care delivery as well. We have more than 12 clinical AI projects ongoing as well as projects focusing on how generative AI can help our clinicians, nurses and support teams work more efficiently.
Looking ahead, the pace of change in technology is only going to go up. In health care, technology assumes an even more important role because it can singularly influence the most important goals of a health care system: quality, accessibility and affordability.
However, it is important for all of us to remember that technology is not an end in itself. Technology is only a tool, and can never replace the human touch. There is a pressing need to marry technology and digital innovation with a deeply human context. We face myriad, complex problems today―poverty, hunger, disease, sanitation, urban migration, public infrastructure, energy, environment, even loneliness. The technological strides we have made can help build low-cost, effective solutions to many of these issues.
And finally, no technology can compete with human intelligence. Computers work on cold, linear logic and lack perception, whereas human beings function as thinking, feeling beings. In an age of intellectual fragmentation, the best creations occur when people from disparate fields are connected together, when our distinct ways of seeing the world are brought to bear on a singular problem.
Our efforts will continue to harness what’s innately beautiful about the human race―its perception, its imagination, its resourcefulness, its ability to generate results much more than the sum of its parts.
The writer is Director-Strategy, Apollo Hospitals.