DHAI Event July29

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live-webinar

Held on July 29, 2020 @ 6:00 PM

Ask me Anything: Digital Health and Imaging by IISc and TalentSprint

  • Speaker
    Dr Nita Sachan
    Head Strategy & Solutions
    Medical Technology & Healthcare at Cyient
  • Speaker
    Dr Santanu Paul
    MD & CEO
    TalentSprint

The following webinar provides an insightful discussion between Dr Santanu Paul, MD & CEO, TalentSprint and Dr Nita Sachan, Head Strategy & Solutions, Medical Technology & Healthcare at Cyient on how technology is disrupting healthcare and opening up new opportunities for technology professionals to build novel solutions.

Watch Webinar Recording

About Advanced Certification Programme in Digital Health and Imaging

Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Centre for Continuing Education (CCE), with its expertise in multi-disciplinary science offers Advanced Certification Programme in Digital Health and Imaging. Delivered in association with TalentSprint, this executive friendly in-depth and comprehensive programme is best suited for professionals creating cutting edge technology solutions in eHealth, Personalized Healthcare, BioTech, Medical Devices, Wearables, Digital Therapeutics and more.

Event Transcript

Exciting Careers in Digital Health in a Post Pandemic World

Good evening, everyone. It's a pleasure to have you all this evening joining us for exciting careers in digital health in a post pandemic world. As you're aware that talentsprint, along with Minister of Science, has launched this program for the first time in the country, perhaps first time in the world advanced program in digital health and imaging, which has been inspired by the fact that digital transformation happening in every sector in the world today. And healthcare is now of course, a prime example of that post COVID. So this transformation was happening for quite some time, but now I think it's gained a lot of momentum. And this particular program is a convergence of data analytics, AI, machine learning, cloud and mobility, which is going to allow people who are aspiring for great careers in digital health, to acquire skills and knowledge that will make them valuable professionals in their respective fields. So with that being the agenda today, we have with us, Dr. Dr. rangarajan sitting to my right. And for those of you who may or may not know A very well known scientist entrepreneur. She has a great academic background. She has degrees from Stanford and Harvard, and Rockefeller in various aspects of biology and medicine. She has been a principal scientist in early part of the career at Dr. Betty's labs. And subsequently, she was an entrepreneur for 10 years running a very exciting company called Peters farmer. And then she spent a year after that as the head of the incubator for med tech companies at triple it. Lately, she's been playing a very interesting role as Chief Scientific Officer at a company called health Q. And of course, healthcare is the middle of lots of right now. And we thought this would be exciting to have you rather here to talk to potentially interested participants in webinar who are contemplating careers in digital health or have already built providing digital health and trying to upskill themselves. So with that being the case let's spend a few minutes just looking at the overall market sizing of this. It's been a I will Perhaps one of the greatest explosions in terms of market potential. I was reading a McKinsey report earlier today. And I thought from that, but in this particular view of the world right now, there is it's more than 100 billion dollar market that's in there for a while and now doubling almost in the store itself. So it's a market has gone from 100 billion and change to 200 billion plus by the end of 2020. And the interesting part here is the health digital health market is actually growing in 47%, which makes it almost like it's doubling every two and a half years. Any industry which doubles every two and a half years would have to be considered as an explosive growth industry and therefore the timing for this whole program. And the kind of discussions you want to have is perhaps ideal to go to the next slide here. It's also interesting that Dun and Bradstreet has done a study across all industries and sectors to find out which sectors are likely to be most transformed by training and learning and where the budgets are going to be lots of spend will happen. Lots of I would say time and money will be spent in training. Well, surprise, not surprisingly, health and medical services get 16%, the highest of all industry in terms of transmission and training budgets. So for today's discussion, we figured that instead of talking about careers in a boring sort of fashion using pure statistics, let's talk in terms of stories and an examples of the kinds of careers and especially the kinds of companies and solutions that are coming into the fore in the New Age, using new age effect technologies. And we figured that that might be a good way to talk to all of you and and hear another story of how these companies are transforming the world birds taking the whole large complex ecosystem of digital health and broken it up into few sectors so we can talk about that. So So let me start the first question that consumer health wearables is one of the most exciting things that people talk about running with Fitbit Apple Watch, etc. So what is your take of this one sector? And how important is it?

First of all, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here with all of you. It's a very, very exciting space. Right now, the own pace around digital health is booming. In many things are really coming together, doting parent.

Let me talk a little bit about

you know, wearables. And

what's let's making

face it to everybody. So you know that these are small nifty devices, you bet on your wrist and heart rate on them and you have to watch me steps for various fitness parameters how many calories you have Do it helps you with your fitness goals. So there's a lot of little nifty things you can do for health and well being. And one of the key parameters that is now, when these devices first started, they were interesting because you are learning some facts about and you could perhaps encourage yourself to better or to exercise for long. But very soon, it became clear that the data that was coming out of this was valuable and could be mine. And that's exactly what Apple Watch has done. What they did in our in a study that they that they performed. Take one step further and say that hey, yeah, we have available, but can it be put to some practical medical, and so they had a study with 400,000 participants and once again, this is one of the successes of digital health. and work with very large numbers of people at low cost and very seamless, because there's no face to face interaction of the thought. And these individuals were then attract for about 170 days. And they were if there were any irregularities in the artery, then a notification. And these were individuals who did not have any history of apple. So, approximately 2000 plus individuals receive notifications. And they were very quickly segregated by this to say, you know, you need immediate care. So we're going to pull you out of the study and see if there was any medicine or interaction with efficient points, but ultimately, they were 450 participants received a patch which they then bought for several more days, and through those ECG patches, you will pick up anything irregularities in the heart rate confirming what the Apple Watch was saying. And so they found that all these folders 34% actually add it, which I think is a great story. Because you're you took something which the consumer product and now converted it to a diagnostic, which are solves the purpose of alerting the person taking some action without that person having had to go to a healthcare. And so this is where I think wearables are becoming a very, very big part story very soon. You know, the date things that we didn't know about are people know, kinds of sensors, and that will transform how early medical care and that's fabulous because, as you know, for most conditions are the

most fascinating so a consumer device which is exciting and valuable, becomes the edge device through which I'm using IoT and sensors, or data comes in with centralized analytics can run predictions can run, you can see what looks like consumer device at one end a fun device and he becomes an integral part of a large larger wellness program. You know, all of us could sign up for this and say, Look, we are our wellness kind of, in some sense being tracked. And we can get useful alerts and inputs from people. And the back of the back end of it is analytics.

And the project is IoT and sensors. I think the analytics can can can take these data and create better and better products better and better insight. And that's that is exactly what the world war.

So those of you who are watching this story so far, you can now look at the screen, which has been up for a while. All the companies that I mentioned here, are working in various forms of consumer health wearables. And I think if you look at these companies that are really exciting aspirational companies, many of them come from Tektronix backgrounds come from healthcare device background, convergence is happening, and companies like Google, so people We'll come from all kinds of you know various aspects of ology and consumer appliances electronics computing, the back end capabilities are converging into this space which is part consumer part healthcare. Great move on to the you know, sort of next concept for example, if you think of consumer healthcare device, that certain individual consumer using it right. But I know that healthcare providers who are actually out there helping a professional medical technician, medical professionals, paramedic doctors, whatever you call them. In other words, certified medical professionals are also using smart devices untold and I know that your company is one of them, providing one of the most interesting such devices, they talk about that story about how professionals are using these devices.

So the company I'm Cheapside is called healthcare and this is a Primary Care Technology and and what decaf is a device, which does multiple, which measures multiple parameters by chemical. Like glucose to the cholesterol, he will global. And it can do that pressure, pulse oximetry meaning oxygen saturation, and I'm 20 feet. And then we have Bluetooth enabled weighing scale and high feeders. So person, of course it can be, can be measured for height and weight. And then we have a camera visit, which can keep track of time. Now, if this is all the default state, then I would say that Yeah, it's a nifty little, little gadget, which is aggregating a whole bunch of tests. And sure, yeah, it minimizes the time that it takes to get all these tests done. But you know, what's the big deal? The big deal here is that this device now speaks to a proprietary application. So for every individuales was tested now have an automatic and and remember that in India, this is the one of the most difficult problems. hospitals have struggled with it small clinics have struggled with it. So everybody carries that little five inch pitch all the way down. But you're now you can get an EHR doing nothing as far as, as far as the medical practitioners concern, and all of the test reports. And the next time the person visits, that previous report can be pulled from the cloud, and can be analyzed now at the back. Be respect of, we respect our patient data, and we're fully committed to data privacy, want to give our patients the best possible care that they could, which involves using analytics to understand whether we can create certainty. For example, if we see repeated I blood pressure, high systolic pressure for a particular individual, we can we are now in a position to analyze and scan and provide from say this person for follow up, you know, what is what is additional. So, by creating a device, which does many things are creating an electronic process of collecting the data here, there's no there's no there's no written stuff, and saving it and building analytics on top of it. But we're providing comprehensive health care to individuals in places where diagnostic laboratories are hard to come by. Most of our devices are in tier two tier three towns and rural areas. So what have we done, we created healthcare, you know, so on this sort of a smart device, a connected device, which uses a variety of digital, ultimately can do a lot more for the individuals that we traditionally thought of For your products. So this is a this is the kind of this is an example. Now I'll say that the medical devices industry as a whole is being transformed completely because today any device that goes to market is required to have some smart it's either in the way the data are delivered to the, to the individual, or it's in the way the analytics sits on top of the test to give more than just a number, or it is by way of advice to the physician to say Hey, have you thought about it? You know, so, digital data analytics are embedded in almost every aspect.

So even as a biologist was trained in biology or your life you're seeing now or can you kind of essentially concluding that data analytic skills are almost as equally important as biological skills or skills because the diagnosing happening through systems and applications and algorithms this the story demands A lot of those of you who follow India's journey through financial inclusion, for the last 10 years or even longer banking correspondents have been people in the field, who go to villages and offer a hand paste ATM device where people punch in their information, put a fingerprint and they get money out from the person, the human ATM speak. This reminds me a lot of that technology enabled medical technician in the field who was in Albany in semi rural areas is providing the role of playing the role of a clinic or a diagnostic unit. Yes. And a mobile device device. Yeah, so it's very strong analogy. And what happened with financial inclusion we are having with health inclusion.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And if you layer on top of this other technologies like telemedicine, then there's no difference left between somebody who's in tier one.

Yeah. So this must be a very fertile area for startups. I would think that people would love to kind of try out various kinds of health intuition capabilities. So anyway, Mobile on topics. So the third thing, of course, inevitably at this point in time with what's happened with COVID. And subsequently, I think the big thing I see is in telehealth to make a point of that. This morning, as I mentioned before, I was going through a McKinsey report on what's happening with telehealth. And it turns out that before COVID, only 11% of prospective patients felt that I could get the medical help I need from home and 89% believed that you could not get the right medical health you need without going to a clinic or a hospital. Today, apparently the numbers have shifted 56% people believe that the medical health the need can be received from home itself using telehealth. And so as a dramatic she does get almost one to 10% or 50% in a matter of three to six months globally. Right. Okay, let me help. We'll never go back. I mean, health care in that sense will never go back just like companies are giving up office space. I think hospitals have to give up hospital space especially outpatient department. As you start to go to the hospital inpatient or outpatient has been largely going to become telehealth enabled. So can you tell us some interesting stories about innovation in telehealth and career intelligence?

Sure. So I think primary care right now is very badly hit by by COVID. And that's because, you know, people don't want to go see a doctor. They don't want to go to a healthcare facility for simple conditions. And they're sort of just making do and healthcare providers when they are when they are, you know, when they have small clinics, they're providing primary care, or even certain types of specialized care like, like ophthalmology, dentistry, they're very hesitant to restart the outpatient process, unless very, very critical. So you've seen a profusion of telehealth options. Every major hospital today has some sort of a telehealth platform that they are using. To connect with patients, and while you talked about consumers accepting telehealth on the other side even doctors accepting telehealth as a viable mode of giving a choice yeah consultation was not as well as it was was really not expected at all until COVID have so I'm telling health you know so there's a lot of different players including Paul and others, including a pornos have an entire telehealth vertical. But I think it's a it's a it's instructive to take a look at some examples of what any health does it just it's beyond just providing an appointment in a way it's actually you can do much more than that. So Lv Prasad Eye Institute, which is which

is in the country? Absolutely.

They've experimented with telehealth considered quite a bit because they've tried to reach out to distant poodles. locations and observations and research now, because of COVID, they decided to use Teddy, Teddy medicine as a way to stratify patients into two groups, those who can be, you know, treated via telemedicine alone remotely and those who need to be seen in person they need to come into the hospital. So they did they did a very short, the, you know, there was a very, very short study that they did in April main. This is the pediatric patient, they really didn't want coming into the hospital. So often hundred and 61 pediatric patients. It turned out that 81% would be treated remote and only 19% needed to come in and what they did is that they had a they have their own proprietary platform, which shadings appointments and sets up the video call and provides the description but they also added on additional application like this application called Big acuity which is a way of testing vision. It's the equivalent of having a chart of the wall and reading and then the physician deciphering what the power is. So they, you know, they used applications like that. And then also applications that will measure the motility of the of the of the eye. And by doing such by adding on such applications to that element platform, they were able to really address 80% of the need. So, I think these are, these are interesting examples where telemedicine paired with with other applications are delivering healthcare to the individual in the comfort of their home. very seamless. And these things are not going to go away because it works for the physician and it works for them. It's a win win.

Imagine, you know, historically people have traveled from all over the world or the country to come to the facade, or today, the example that you gave, I mean, if I look at the major urban Hospital in Madurai or shanken, a trailer in Chennai, 34 centers of excellence, which people get on trains from Northeast of India, to get to these places, right, and it's a three day journey. Now, we can do that on a app or, you know, web based browser. I mean, that's remarkable. Why would you not, why not? And especially 80% of the people can solve their problems that way, right? If you overlay this with the fact that 50% plus people are saying that we are okay with telehealth and 80% of the doctor, doctors analytical case I can handle Yeah, totally help. I mean, this is just going to be the natural

way of doing things wrong. And then you can build all kinds of analytics over, you know, ultimately, the goal of healthcare is to provide consistent regular care, and this enables the use of technology.

Yeah. Okay, so that's actually a very good example of data. Health and I think telehealth telemedicine platforms and probably explode. You know, I'm still kind of processing my own comment earlier that, you know, in every sector, you know, real estate is becoming less and less valuable. And digital estate is becoming more and more powerful. So you know, you've got an institution or an organization offering any kind of technology or health or some intersection thereof, it's actually you have to build your digital estate faster, and you're going to lower your real estate. In some sense, commercial real estate is going to get replaced by digital investments and assets and every one of these and and what do you have an app or holding a smartphone or on that web application is going to be far more valuable? Okay, so moving along a little further, let's get to know one things that those of you have actually looked at this particular program and its design probably realized that you know, there is a large amount of AI and machine learning and deep learning built into this course which in at first blush might might appear that's a bit of a technical overdrive. But I think people don't realize today already let me go to get medical procedures, they are already been subjected to AI on the other side, right. So obviously one of the areas that becomes very important in this is, you know, ai enabled radiology. Yes. Or let's talk about that for a while, because I think we are taught many examples there of what AI is doing, right. So I mean, I know we have people we know who are doing, you know, PhDs in imaging, I mean, earlier do used to be a specialization of medicine. Now, it's because of computer science. computer scientists become radiologists because they can use imaging to figure out things so So tell us about what's happening in enabled radiology or machine learning enabled radiology. Give us some good examples.

Sure. I think this is one of those fields of medicine that is not most, perhaps it is most, in some sense. It's easier. It's an easier specialization. Okay. knology to get into because it's all based on some sort of data, in this case, image data. So I'll give you a few different examples. So there's a company for running the auto space. And we do any deal. Yeah. So and they, they have built retinal scanner. These are small cameras, that can take a picture of the back of your eye, which is, which is the retina because the light sensitive part of the eye. And it's, it's, it's, it's chock full of blood vessels. And by looking at looking at the distribution and the pattern of these patterns, a lot of different insights can be drawn. Now one of the most often, most of us application of retinal scanning is to detect a condition called diabetic retinopathy, which is When blood vessels get damaged to do that, due to diabetes, and you don't often have any symptoms, or the symptoms are very mild in the initial phases. But if you have a retinal scan done, you can see this more easily. And obviously, you can take action immediately. The remedy was built an analytical tool, which analyzed which looks at this retinal scan, and can say, oh, there is there is evidence of diabetic retinopathy. And why is that, again, that's transformative because now you can embed these sorts of technologies in primary care clinics where somebody is going and getting their blood glucose tested while now you know what, they can also get a retinal scan done. They don't have to go to an ophthalmologist. So this is this is how you can help people get healthier by detecting a tumor. Yeah. So so that's a diabetic retinopathy example using a retinal scan now going back to the radiology example that you gave, so, there are several companies that are doing that are either analyzing x rays, or they're analyzing CT scans, which are the most common types of radiological evidence in medicine. So there's, you know, there's a company called cure AI, an Indian company, they analyze chest x rays, and they're able to detect tuberculosis. And so these are that there's a there's a company called breezy AI, they look at CT scans, and they can then detect so CT scans of the brain to detect stroke. So what does this do that a radiologist can't do? Well, they speed you don't have to wait for a radiologist to read. And most of these tools are clinical decision support tools. So the machine does the takes the image and within seconds or minutes, there is an analysis completed and an alert to say, Hey, I think there's something here So what what does that mean to a radiologist is that they will look at those images ahead of anybody else. Again, you could speed time to treatment. Yeah.

So the assumptions are interrupted with interruption. And the assumption here is that there is the machine is kind of playing kind of a quick screening first level, you know, judgment and making the human resource which is scarce, because human expertise is scarce. In medicine, doctors are hard to get doctors, the physicians, and their time is valuable and the time is often not prioritized well, but having a layer of machine assisted flagging, alerting systems can actually put the queue in the right order so that doctors can educate patients first and the trigger triage system that automatically sorted itself out

but you can imagine the complexity of this of these of these analytic tools are not only does it have to the tool has to have high sensitivity and specificity otherwise it will be put aside as useless. Yeah, and this means that the that the amount of data that goes into the Training have the tools. And the validation that happens subsequently have to be very robust. And that's what we're seeing these kinds of days, there are now FDA approved algorithms, especially for analyzing different kinds of images like CT scans and x rays. There are so they're FDA approved and can be used in the in the clinic. In India, we have a slightly different way of of, of dealing with AI algorithms, but if epi is the gold standard, and I would say that the fact that at least a dozen of these algorithms have made it and how to seek approval that tells you how good they are.

So this is interesting because I have read somewhere that IBM Watson, which is, in some sense, the most advanced machine in the world with AI and machine learning in terms of being able to, you know, detect tumors, for example, in cancer patients, right and images. I'm told that if you take the, you know, typically cancer chemo diagnostics happens through boards each hospital has been writing on boards, experts getting together Yes, with tons of experience and they collectively voting on whether this was cancer or not cancer. And that's kind of very, I would say a very sacred process that hospitals believe in, in deciding patient treatment. I'm told that Watson's algorithms for human detection have now reached a scale where they have a 93% concurrence or the overlap between a human expert demo board and Watson diagnostic is almost like 93% convergent. So which basically says that, you know, these machines can be as good as some of the best doctors in the world. Is that fair?

up I think with the right training and the right kind of analytic

tools are doing a fantastic job. I think, though, the

All we need is really to keep on mining the data for more and more insight. So can you look at a retinal scan and derive something more from the other one Thought

Yeah, so anything that can become an image potential, like if, if I take pictures of somebody's skin, yes, or take pictures of somebody's blood cells, or pictures of their, you know, sort of nasal drip or whatever. So technically once it's something that becomes an image, it becomes the it to go right in terms of processing. Okay. That's the infinite, essentially, medicines becoming computer science. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, great. So moving along. From AI enabled, it's come to the other area, which you know, we hear about a lot and I know this is probably in very advanced area, which is precision medicine, you know, I'm not a doctor or a medicine person, but the promise of precision medicine is similar the promise of Amazon This is that you know, everybody is different. Every buyer and consumer is different when they log into Amazon they get different recommendations, or you get Netflix you get different recommendations. Yeah. So now when you know five people have the same disease can we can fight will get different treatments which are most suited to their specific Tradition constitution you know, etc. Yes. So, so what is the role of AI and deep tech in in such precision medicine, what are some examples?

So, precision medicine has been, as you know has a lot of applications in cancer where the disease itself is very complex. And although the process of testing drugs for cancer involve very specific doses and very specific dosing regimens, people are now moving to this point of view that individual's genetic makeup and the types of other factors

that are that that are unique to that individual

require these regimens or drugs to be reconsidered or to be tailored to get Take a lot of different types of data. For example, you can take data about the gene expression profile of that particular person's cancer, you can take data about the types of mutations that the person has in their genome, you can look at what kind of familial history there is for this individual and take disparate types of data and create something which is very tailored. That's traditionally how we thought about precision medicine. Now, this, this is an emerging field. And this is really a space that that where doctors, you know, physicians, researchers, and computer scientists are much more work to do. But there are other types of precision medicine which have come along very nice. And I'll give you an example of diabetes. So people who have type one diabetes and such individuals really their their their, their pancreas are factored and they're not able to produce insulin. And the only way for them is to intervene to inject protect themselves with insulin. Also, a number of people who have type two diabetes can progress to a point where they need to inject themselves with insulin. So one of the one of one of the adverse effects of injecting yourself with the wrong amount of insulin is that you can go into hypoglycemia which can be dangerous. Therefore, it is important that the level of insulin or the dose of insulin injected takes into account the current Platinum cost level. And you know, what is the food intake that is anticipated? And so here is where interestingly, our precision medicine company for pre med which is an Israeli company has come up with this belief system of continuing Measuring glucose, having an insulin pump to inject insulin and having the individual tests themselves using our home test and connectivity to the physician in case something is not an order to this complex web of interactions or complex set of data are taken into account to to really drive the insulin injection engine. And this is complex as it sounds, if they are actually able to do this effectively, a number of people prefer this to being on a standard regimen of injecting themselves a certain number of units of insulin at fixed time. So, this is the type of precision medicine that I think is is valuable to patients and and and has delivered for patients. There's other types of precision medicine as well, for example, you know, in with prosthetics and I think the use of precision medicine is perhaps not correct. It's customized customized prosthetic or prosthetics that for example, you know, 3d printed prosthetics that fit a particular space, whatever it is, that is being placed on and that particular the dimensions of that space are derived from, from image data, which are then converted into some sort of, you know, 3d volume model. And then and then and then the prosthetic can be can be printed to these kinds of more precise products. So, so I think there's, there's quite a range of things that can be done as far as position goes. And this is This is solid, this is really where a lot more innovation is waiting to happen.

So I'm told that dentistry is one of those places where we all get custom dental implants eventually is that is that a good example of printer teeth? Yes, using 3d models

that would be one, you know, where replacements of bone are needed that could be the other also bionic hands, where the there is a piece that is implanted in the brain and can interact with the prosthetic arm and can and can help people you know, pick up objects, provide dexterity, all of these things. These are all enabled using AI enabled tools which are built into the physical product.

I think a lot of questions now. So we are reaching the point where we can start taking questions and of course I can keep bouncing in and talking about stuff. So, you know, let's just pick some good examples. You know, I think let's just take some out of this list that we can focus on expand the size of it a little bit. That'd be helpful. Hmm, this is interesting. I caught my eye that, you know, the name of the company that talked about diabetes, precision medicine. dreamit is how he spelled that

Dr. A

dream ad. Okay, so that's an easy answer, easy question to start with. So, you know, I think in terms of the overall, you know, set of questions I'm looking at, I'm just gonna take a few to kind of get started. So telehealth is repeating itself many, many, many times, right. Let's take telehealth as a concept and let's pick one question from this. So if you are basically looking at technical, right, so what kind of careers do you think will bring because Historically, you've talked about people who are working in hospital settings. And now you're saying that telemedicine will be the kind of delivery system that will become more and more common. People won't come for a standard casual consultation or whatever simple checkup. So if you're a professional, what kind of career is taking, you know, getting better telemedicine telehealth will bring people who can who are digitally savvy current using computers, but are using data put at running algorithms? What is the skill set?

I think the first rush of people will be really those who can build out these platforms and who can provide all of the different parts that are needed to make telemedicine successful. I mean, for example, there's a question How is telemedicine different from a telephone consultation? And, you know, a telemedicine consultation allows for much more data to be collected for example. Now imagine a situation where telemedicine is combined with certain types of point of care devices, or IoT devices, and some data is being then transmitted back to the system. And then that gets analyzed that gets

recorded and reported. So to Fitbit,

yeah, it's talking to your computer, you know, in COVID, times, for example, temperature, oxygen, saturation, pulse. These are things that can be measured on the Fitbit. Now let's say that it's off if you're not manually transmitting this, but this is going to be enabled or something like that. And you could transmit the data at the back end, somebody can run a risk assessment algorithm on you and say, Okay, this is what I see. You know, you've got a blood test report, I can see the lymphocyte count I can see these things I can I can I know that you have symptoms x y Zed? Yes, your iris you need to be seen in a hospital or no, you're at moderate risk, or you're at lower risk. Don't worry about it, though. I think a telephone consultation is limited to simply the answer. Two questions, and telemedicine opens up the possibility of transmitting data transmitting.

So that's interesting. So it's like, you know, voice was the data, right? We talked about this in the telecom context, you know, we always used to phone calls today, we are using messaging much more commonly, and data is more prevalent than voice. And it's taken 10 years for this transformation to happen, right. So, in this case, we are saying that a telemedicine consultation will be bi directional movement of voice and data between the provider and the patient, right, using the device. So you know, if you're, you know, a specialized device you might have so if you have, for example, somebody who's been in home care for a long period, yeah, would have special devices that are set up in your house by your nurse or your staff and those will be talking to your Yeah, she's been uploading data on a regular basis. I think that's a pretty good distinction. It's not just voice alone. We can now open up for people who want to talk I am you know, have people waiting on the call. So let's open up for voice interaction and start with Whitaker. Can you please unmute and ask your question?

Hi, Peter the site.

Can you hear me?

Yes, very well. Go ahead please.

Yeah. So,

you mentioned about the primary care devices, which is measuring different parameters together. So, I would like to know where it is getting used currently and how is the outcome

okay. So, point of care primary primary care devices are being used in a number of different community health settings as well as in in tier two tier three towns, rural areas, public health facilities, these are the kinds of places where we are seeing a lot more of these point of care devices being used. So which which side of the country if you just to let us know this example please. Ah, so I talk about the health device because there are about Yeah. So, there are about 800 devices in India and about 200 devices in in Africa that are currently in use to and I there's I think almost all of the states except for a few we have installations in a number of different installations and up under Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu. So, there are both they are they are these these devices are in prime in doctors clinics as well as in

as well as in

primary care facilities of the government. Okay, and how accurate How accurate is the data as for the lab data or the point of care devices. As you know they are they need to meet accuracy standards of what are called clear wave devices. So usfda and that's what devices mean. For example, for glucose, you know, plus or minus, you know, 15 makes per deciliter plus minus 15%. So there's there are standards which, which are globally accepted for point of care device.

Okay, switch back to one question that's coming from the sort of Jack's chat here. How does analytics support the pharma industry they should be really on for you because pharma industries where you can cut your teeth

wasn't good analytics examples of pharma.

So, in the pharma industry, there's really two, there are many verticals, but if you divided there are the there are those who are doing research and discovery work to find new drugs and there are those who are focused on manufacturing and distribution and sale so generic drug manufacturing for example, is a whole other space in pharma. But if I look at drug discovery, one of the most difficult parts or aspects of bringing our drug to the market is that you got to find something which is perfect, which has the efficacy, which has safety and for which you have enough clinical data to show that yes, this works, these are the rules. Now, one particularly difficult part in choosing the right compound to take forward is that you have to actually bake these compounds, test them and only then you know, whether they work or not. So in the pharma industry, AI is being used extensively to screen these compounds, or to screen structures virtually, and to understand how well these compounds fit into specific, you know, how when they engage with certain specific proteins and that thereby Cut out several years of early work to get to candidate compounds faster. This is one way. The second way is in the way clinical trials are speeding up and the way that you can use digital tools to recruit people into clinical trials, greatly cutting short amount of time it's taking to compete. Other ways, you know, as far as manufacturing goes, You know, I think there are applications of blockchain that people are thinking about in order to prevent counterfeiting of drugs and so on. But these are still early applications

will open up a question for allow.

So shaker, would you like to ask a question?

Hello, Yes, go ahead. Please,

sir. Good evening, Madam Good evening. Myself, so I'm Shekar. I work in one of the government sector in UAE. It's a hospital industry. My question to you is, like I am from a healthcare background. Hello?

Yes, yes,

yeah, I'm from a healthcare background and looking to upskill myself myself with this kind of course. Now, my straight question is after the completion, where would my role will fit into it? Will it be into the analyst analytical part? Are it will be more technical part in the health AI domain.

Before you ask us one more clarification, what are you doing exactly right now? What's your

current role? Okay. my current role is I work as a quality lead. It's much of implementing health care quality projects in our hospital. Can you

give us an example of such a project you're doing right now?

Okay, like we are doing currently doing a project where we identify oncology patients who present to hospital with neutropenic symptoms. We try them has a priority like category two among the other patients, we give them priority and we try to achieve them on make sure that they received early antibiotic contraception management within one hour of arrival to Ed.

I see very nice,

very good, what kind of career so once you decide

and one more thing? Yes.

As my madam mentioned, we are already using the pOcT for the troponin for cardiac arrest two as a screening tool. This is the point of care test. And we have an image analytics using AI to interpret the CT images for the COVID patients. Okay. Okay. So, with this kind of exposure, what I'm having along with the technical upskilling where would my role will be fitting into this is my questions. Sure.

Um, so the the The this kind of a course could could help you identify view or put create new analytics for, for better, you know for transient or other conditions or for better diagnosis earlier diagnosis based on whatever data you're looking at. So, I think it opens up the possibility that you can you can be part of the the team that actually innovates and finds and brings new puts new tools in place.

Yeah, I got a call from Add to this the quality background is very relevant here. So, the way I see it is like this, if you look at you know how people evolve in careers right. Let's take a simple example. What happens to a programmer is a field I know right? If somebody writes code, then they start designing code. Then they start designing architecting systems and then the basically Come people who design architectures however the way they should be done, right. So if you look at the same practices where you're following a particular system that's been set up by your institution, there's a particular protocol, a set of things you have to do sort of tools you have to use. Once you acquire the skills, you elevate yourself to the next level, when you design systems, you can actually help a hospital, your current one evolving system or a new another hospital builder is for the first time and now you are equipped with not just the tools and systems are using you are today user of technology, you can become actually a builder of technology, yes, and better a better technology because you know how to use it, and what additional skill sets that you can apply with AI and machine learning and analytics into this. So I always say that if somebody is doing something, this kind of program will help you build such things. So you go from being an implementer of a system to a builder of a system. Does it make sense? Yeah, we'll move on the interest of time. So let's just look at perhaps Dr. David, they will read you ravishankar Good than audio over there. Yeah. Can you please Dr. Ravi Shankar vinegars?

Yes, please go ahead. No.

All right. Any other questions here that rather strike you as you want to take on? I mean, actually this one that like a lot, I'm doing the aging population drug delivery, how will such a course with AI machine learning can be built my career? So drug delivery is probably a common sort of area, right? How do you use skill sets? analytics?

Yeah, so I think, you know, the

traditional models of drug delivery and the way we understand drug delivery systems is all about, you know, you formulate a drug and now you have a new way of formulating it or do you have a new way of, you know, achieving better concentrations in the blood and these are the kinds of of innovation that we have traditionally seen in the drug delivery systems. And now, the The question is, how can you use AI to, to, you know, how what are the applications of AI in in drug delivery and formulation? So, you know, one of the things that comes to my mind is that traditionally, we have always had to formulate things specifically in the lab and test them. Now, the goal should be to do some of these things virtually, and can be achieved that by creating databases of existing excipients that are, that are used for formulation, playing with these excipients virtually and trying to understand what kind of solubility was also I think there are there's a lot of work that needs to happen in terms of understanding how drugs are absorbed. So, this whole idea of permeability and absorption, absorption of compounds, draws the GI value for example, these are models that are waiting to be set up. They don't exist. And, and and here is where I think that somebody with loss which interdisciplinary skill sets will come with the background information or ability, and then you learn a new set of skills can actually save something.

So I think there was a question on public health, which I wanted to highlight earlier that somebody says, you know, with the public health situation in the country today and how, if you look at India to public health professionals, what kind of skills to public health professionals

I mean, your company is a good example even publicans work. Yeah.

And let me say that 2025 years ago, India is a country where mortality rates due to infectious disease are much higher than non compliance. But that's changed. The mortality is due to non cardiovascular, cardiovascular, and cancer, the lead at the leading causes of paladins. For any chronic condition, monitoring of individuals is of huge importance. And that's where technology comes in. We can't monitor and, you know, we can't monitor billions of people, unless we have good systems for storing data, being able to find the data to understand risk factors. Very good analytics for for early warnings. So I think, first public health there are any there's no limit to what the analytics can do.

I'm going to allow a call to come in Robbie, would you like to ask the question, please unmute yourself and go ahead. Yeah Hi. Thank you Thank you. Thank you man. It was a very nice session with him drivers having another parallel webinar I just to mute that and I was listening this one so I'm basically so I'm basically working as a I'm particularly into a bi analytics area. So currently working for a telecom and broadband service provider company as a business system analyst or Data System Engineering you can say, but I have very much interest to do something in healthcare domain. So is this course going to help our along with this course I need to become something to get the domain expertise, whether it's medicine or medical device or pharma anything.

What's your educational background?

I did my graduation. BSc mathematics there. I have MCA. That is that is my education. So you have all the tools, you're looking for the problem, right? So I always say that, you know, like, there are problems and there are tools, right? Some people have the problem but they don't have the tools. This program is actually in some ways, a people who are in the healthcare domain interested in doing various kinds of things, pick up more advanced tools. You have a lot of the tools, but you may not have AI machine learning tools. This program at least will give you a cohort of people who come from the healthcare domain. Interestingly, I should say this story here because you may not know this our blockchain program that we ran for last year and a half. Three startups have come out of that people who came together from different companies they came to attend the program. And when they finished they had built a group of friends who are taking the course with them for six months and the quit the jobs and metal form companies in a blockchain domain and one of them is called asleep medicine. In check it out. They actually work in exactly the problem is they're using blockchain to prevent mass pharmaceutical fraud essentially take medicines, right how to prevent Take me to the point is that, you know, there's a obviously a learning, there's a content of learning that happens in the context of learning. So in your case, I would say that, you know, apart from picking up advanced tools, which will happen, you can also get to hang out to people who live in this very often. And that itself may give you a whole new set of perspective on your learning. And that would actually also help you understand, incidentally, the professors are teaching, they all come from a significant bio and engineering and technology background. So the format of this course is in some sense, you know, you can come in through one door and go to the door, you can come into technology and technology. It's a in some sense, hopefully, as people cross these directions, they run into each other. And that cross pollination may be of value to you as well. Hopefully, that. Yeah, so I have some sort of machine learning and I'm beginner to a so I'm doing that. So yeah, thanks for your domain as well as Tools. Yeah. So let's open up some more questions on the line in your cupboard. So I'm Siobhan Would you like to unmute yourself and ask a question.

And she might it's your turn.

Kathy Lawson and Dr. Naresh Vish, would you like to go ahead? No. All right. So we just go back to some text questions are coming from chat. Okay, I want to challenge this one more time. I worked with a few pharma industry companies and I don't see AI there. I think this is actually a perhaps a sign of the times that this is a matter of time before it happens, right.

So I think also that

the majority of Indian farmer come Our manufacturing company, and Pepsi is thought to move in such context.

But if you're doing innovation, then this is critical. Yes, discovery,

clinical development, drug discovery, but

also things like pharmacovigilance, and stuff like that have lots of data relevant. Yeah. So I did one thing that I want to comment on, and this is, in the comments, I'm looking at my senses that people struggle with this idea that you can build expertise in a certain set of as well as certain domain at the same time by the intersection of a particular domain of problems, in this case, healthcare, and the tool sets you need to attack it, right. Today, for example, data about something is more valuable than that something right. It's like an app again, sort of the capsule right? If I have a capsule which looks red, you know, it's one thing to have the capsule but to have information about a capsule is far more valuable, namely the patient. Like we always know that pathology Courts tell us something about the patient doctor doesn't have to see you, it will tell you that you have high blood sugar, they must be suffering from certain symptoms. So information about entities is more valuable than the entity sometimes the case in the world of computing, you always look at the information is more valuable, right, like stock market information about the company is more valuable than the company itself. So, are people in pharma, people in healthcare struggling with that they don't see the way to extract information and then managing information and modeling it and using an AI on it.

And analytics scientific for sure.

Is it our domain? Sort of? Sometimes people have a bit of a blind spot that, you know, I'm in health care? Why do I need all this? Do you think that's a good question. I'll be very clear. I'm just trying to understand the information management problem for people. You know, I think that

the, this this, this information that needs to be managed and the complexity of the information really drives more kind of And the more complex the type of information, the more likely AI is good. So, in play in, in parts of pharma, where there is a lot of complexity, you know, that those kinds of spaces, so I was just trying to think of an example. So let's say that you are a manufacturer of pharma manufacturing company. And there are certain chemical processes and processes, chemical reactions that are scaled up and those are done over and over again, that's how the product is manufactured and delivered to a certain quality, there are analytical tests that are done to show that the quality has been achieved. So in this pathway, where does AI so AI can come in, in in ways, for example, in terms of improving the efficiency of, of the raw material, you know, solutions that track and solutions Yeah, supply chain or let's say that You have a particular process for going converting compound A to B. The problem may be that you haven't looked at the wealth of literature to find the optimal reaction to go from A to B. So, those kinds of processing tools

so last question to you before we close today.

What advice would you give to somebody starting a career in healthcare today? Right and healthcare is a very large field. I'm not I'm over generalizing What? If somebody started a career in healthcare, what advice would you give them in terms of their technical skill set, apart from the domains, what skill sets they should have, that will make them relevant for the next 10 1520 years in healthcare? I think

a bare minimum is being able to analyze large amounts of data and derive surveillance. I think that's become an order Stone

necessary.

glacial

and and the reason is that

we call it analytics data analytics. I would say that

because, you know, every everyone who's going through the healthcare system today is expecting more as consumers were expecting both as patients being treated by our doctors were expecting. So getting on the other end, meeting this expectation means being able to data well. So I think that,

by that you mean data, they also have to have the data packages software to use manipulate the data. It's not a spreadsheet and looking at it, right,

right. It's even dashboards, you know, creating good dashboards so you can visualize the user on essentially.

Just before we finish, I want to get a couple more questions to go along. But before that, I would let you know there'll be a whole battle. On 31 I guess many of you have responded so that we can ask certain people to so sananda Kumar, please unmute yourself and go ahead ask a question.

Under Kumar

Hi, good evening,

leaving

hair done my Master's of Public Health and I'm currently working with one of the national health insurance scheme and may still be involved in data analytics and, you know, developing guidelines and operational things. So, I thought to pursue this course, how this course is going to help me. Will will it helped me in terms of upskilling in terms of data analytics and artificial intelligence, application of artificial intelligence in health insurance industry

shorter Absolutely that is the intent of this course is if somebody asked me the question that I've done x, y, and Zed How will this program help me? I get what a serious response and a non serious response, right? The serious responses are the tool sets you will learn will obviously help you because, you know, ai machine learning deep learning is a very big part of the curriculum. So that's, that's a given. However, when people say what will it help me achieve? You know, depends upon, you know, this lady recently read about, who's the first lady to climb Mount Everest knows the first lady to go to the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest part of the ocean using our diver, right, that diving boat, right? She's gone eight kilometers below at the bottom of the ocean at the lowest point and she's gone to Mount Everest. The question is, you know, unless we, unless you say you want to go to Mount Everest, or you want to go to the bottom of the ocean, it's very hard to know what the program is supposed to do. So in some ways, a program is only as good as your goals. So hopefully each of you have goals, which are some people may have goals to say, and I'm generalizing from my experience, but we thought subprograms last few years as parents Like this, this kind of programs, some people take this program because they want to be relevant for them, knowing the latest and greatest about their field is important. They are doing it for intellectual excitement. And others are doing it because they want career growth in their company. They want to go back and say, Look, I've acquired this new skill sets, which are very relevant to our business, to get to a higher level of responsibility and get a promotion, get a bigger role, etc. And that comes with other financial rewards. There are others who say that, look, I'm sick of a company I'm working for, I want to go and work for another company, but those kinds of companies need certain skill sets and getting it in. And the fourth kind of people are people who say, Look, I don't want to be running a company at all, I don't want to a startup. And there are people like that as well. So depending on which of these goals you have, the program will help you in some fashion for sure, and perhaps very strongly in all these dimensions. But not everybody comes to the program with the same thing. Some people want to get promoted in the same company. Some people leave the company to startups and not be working for others at all. So all of those possibilities we have been supporting through our programs across the board and we have lots of programs like that. So Manisha, you want to go ahead? Sure. To ask question.

Hello. Yes, go ahead. I wouldn't be a feminist. So my question is

basically nothing after which I did my masters and administration.

Hello, can you

repeat that please?

Okay, I have done my basic nothing. Okay. Okay. beside it, man, I just, Oh, yeah. After man. Nothing I did my administration.

Okay. Yeah, I got the IDs of experience in hospital operations as far as quality management.

So, where I don't have any technical knowledge that either it would be Data Analytics or data science, whatever it may be, I don't have any in order to do. So what do you want me to get into healthcare IT healthcare? So digital health? How does this course help me out? I'll try to give you a sponsor to see that when you come from a background where you have no technical background with programming or system building, there is a bit of a learning curve that you have to adopt, you have to put some extra effort to get to the point where this you can use AI machine learning or higher order fields, right. So there is one part of that. But one thing that I always tell you is that people who come from domain knowledge and being an mha running operations, you have a lot of domain knowledge about how hospitals and organizations rock that domain knowledge is very valuable, perhaps equally valuable in many ways to doing technical coding. So you may not be able to go back to your IT department to say I'm going to be a coder or a designer of algorithms or an architect. But you can certainly go back and say I want to be a product manager. I'm going to help define a new product or a new application. But the hospital needs because you have the requirements of patients and doctors you know better than any technology cooler. You can become a great business analyst and become a great product manager you can become a quality systems analyst you can make sure the system that is being built by economists actually script to purpose and solving the problem is supposed to solve. So I would say that this course will help you becoming a IT professional requirements perspective and quality person, but you may not be able to become a coder person. I love the last question and we'll close that running on overtime. So perhaps one last question so that you want to unmute and ask a question. So Dr.

Potter has been asked a question Dr. Prakash Kumar.

Go ahead, unmute yourself.

After the question mark.

Hello. Hello.

How can you tell me Like, I often like to see microbiology, MSC, Biochemical Engineering and formulation technology along with MCA along with Oracle database administration and PhD from Ames hospital medicine and sleep disorder, director and experience in cancer in like lung disorder, kidney transplant everything and now I'm designing some device which can identify cancer in the early stage along with a pathological slide identification with CT Pat X ray, along with nutrition profile everything based on quantum computing also. So I'm clicking too hard. I've made it all concepts to not Cover entire things like routing also required and visualization also neural network acquired. So I need your guidance how I should proceed. So that I should not stuck in somewhere in the middle and I should lead somewhere to design those particular device or software, which can help me long term international collaboration I can do with any big organization to get the funds like Wellcome Trust or maybe EBT DST can help or support I should

you want to build a product in your own

hospital because that will be easy way to fund and authenticate your knowledge because every all the data and patient care is a huge amount of thing is the first startup or restriction will come initially because without knowing anything if I go for it only, so I cannot my own living also to earn money or do some things so that we can earn also like scholarship or whatever it is long with fund generation based off because it does not open begins James which is dedicated for cancer Nobody's trying for AI. I'm just initiating that particular thing.

Because I think your problem that you're trying to solve is quite specific and very targeted. I would say that this may be a discussion that like to help people who can ask these questions, we can send this question to us by email. And we'll pass it on to Dr. Raja to take a look and see if she can use some advice. an adoptee wants, I think, because you know, this is probably not a very program specific course that we can address here. So with that, can we wrap up for today? are we are we done? Maybe we'll allow one last question from snackers. Everybody like to take one last shot, and see if you can ask the question. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, very well. Thank you. Hi.

We have already a couple of products,

healthcare products, and based on a

so how can you help

marketing those products

No marketing promotion program. I mean,

if they have some kind of database,

hospitals and

I will not join the program to improve my marketing skills.

This one is not a suitable program for that that's a different discussion, you can join the AI powered marketing program that we are offering in different contexts altogether. So with that, I think we have come to the end of a very long session. And I think a very interesting session. So thank you rather, for your time and for your patience, and sharing all your stories. I think we learned a lot from this. And I'm sure with the kind of questions a number of people setting in chat requests questions and the number of people queued up to ask questions to a lot of hands up, but unfortunately, we are out of time. So we apologize to the audience for not being able to take all your questions. But we also thank you for your support and for staying on and making this a very interactive and very exciting conversation. I enjoyed it. Thank you very much. And for all of those of you who are trying to join the program, we are here. This is First of a kind program and you know there is always a reward that comes from people who are early adopters who make the first leap. And for those of you who have questions you can write into the email address on the screen, the AGI at dance COMM And with that, thank you once again for your support, patience and participation. tonight.

Thank you, everyone.

Watch the entire interview here https://youtube.videoken.com/embed/U97IuTOj7dY

Note: This video transcript is generated by AI. Therefore, it may not be 100% accurate.