By: Anukriti Chaudhari, Co-Founder, FosterHealth AI
We founded FosterHealth AI to safely deliver the benefits of AI to healthcare systems. Over the past few months, we have been closely working with healthcare providers in the US and India across different specialties and provider groups, ranging from large enterprises to small clinics. Throughout these interactions, I have been pleasantly surprised by the innovation-friendly environment within the healthcare ecosystem in India. In this blog, I explain how the Indian healthcare ecosystem is a breeding ground for AI innovation and why it is well positioned to leverage the benefits of AI technology quickly.
Top medical minds actively collaborate during development
Through our partnership with the National Cancer Grid, I have observed that doctors are deeply committed to leverage AI to deliver uniform, equitable cancer-care across India. They are not just passive adopters - they actively take the time to understand the capabilities and limitations of AI technology, and work hand in hand to co-develop solutions. They ensure that we understand the user needs and their constraints, and that we have access to the right medical expertise to take continuous feedback. Nowhere have we learnt more, than within the walls of Tata Memorial Hospital.
Reliable delivery of AI solutions is particularly challenging in India, and hence requires some experimentation. For example, the first thing that hits me every time I enter Tata Memorial Hospital is the overwhelmingly high volume of patients, most of them coming from different parts of the country. Any AI solution we deliver must handle complexities such as high ambient noise and multilingual conversations. The doctors here are remarkably open to experimenting with different approaches - they are invested in finding solutions that are low-cost, reliable, and scalable. The collaborative environment ensures that knowledge seamlessly flows between our teams - it sparks innovations that enhance reliability and usability of the product.
Main building, Tata Memorial Hospital
Eco-system that incentivises high-impact innovations
Koita Centre for Digital Oncology (KCDO), a joint initiative between the National Cancer Grid (NCG) of India and Koita Foundation, was formed to help NCG leverage digital health technologies to meaningfully improve cancer care in India. Its focus areas include driving adoption of new technologies, promoting research and development. Renowned institutes are actively supporting their initiatives (example: recent announcement from Axis Bank).
Organisations such as KCDO, BIRAC, ARTPARK spearhead multiple technology initiatives, offer grants and solicit proposals for co-developed solutions - these programs incentivise high-impact digital health innovations that can deliver value and enhance healthcare delivery in India.
Unique opportunity to deliver population-scale benefits across India
Historically, new technologies and healthcare solutions have often been adopted first in India's cosmopolitan cities, leaving smaller towns and rural areas lagging behind due to infrastructure limitations. However, unlike other technologies, I expect that AI innovations will rapidly diffuse across the country and facilitate equitable care delivery due to two reasons. First, the recent innovations in AI help us build solutions that are not biased to the English speaking audience in India - AI’s multilingual solutions can cater to the diverse population spanning across India, ensuring everyone can benefit from this technology. Second, it's a digital technology that doesn't require any physical infrastructure on-site. Additionally, unlike the US, there are no legacy systems we have to integrate our solution with. The greenfield nature of Indian healthcare system presents us with an opportunity to rapidly diffuse cutting-edge AI innovations.
I am truly excited about delivering equitable AI-innovations that anyone can use- regardless of their age, gender, location, education levels.
At FosterHealth, our mission is to safely deliver the benefits of AI to healthcare systems. We offer AI solutions that can assist with clinical documentation tasks. Our solutions handle complexities such as multilingual use-cases and integrate with EHR systems. We partner with research institutes and co-develop solutions to enhance digitisation rates, facilitate trials, and enable outcomes-based research. If you are a provider or a researcher who could benefit from our work, please contact us here.
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