AI and Telehealth - India's next frontier

AI has been rapidly changing healthcare and one sector that has been significantly impacted is telehealth. With India's current exponential growth in the healthcare sector the inclusion of AI, and telehealth has the potential to transform healthcare delivery in India.

AI is being used to generate a better patient experience and improve health outcomes. According to an MIT study, 75% of healthcare facilities that used AI have claimed that it improved their capacity to cure diseases, while four in five stated that it helped them avoid job burnout. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the pressure on both the healthcare and telehealth sectors. In this article, we explore how AI is transforming the telehealth landscape in the following ways:

1. Accurate Diagnosis: Telemedicine has made remote diagnosis possible. By incorporating AI into the screening process, the number of patient visits is anticipated to decrease further. AI systems can compare pictures of a patient's illness to prior samples to estimate the severity of the disease. This will save time and labor for both physicians and patients. AI can also identify the presence of uncommon genetic disorders from a single picture of a patient's face.
2. Doctor burnout prevention: Doctors are prone to becoming anxious during long work days, causing dissatisfaction and fatigue. AI can help doctors spend less time on their computers and detect signs of burnout before they occur.
3. Better Elderly care: Telehealth is now utilizing assistive robots that will play a significant role in delivering healthcare to residents, particularly the elderly. These robots can help with activities like walking, delivering medicine, and notifying authorities in case of an emergency. AI enables the robots to learn to better assist the patient and act as their caregiver.
4. Higher Patient engagement: AI in the context of healthcare can greatly improve patient engagement by creating personalized care plans tailored to the individual's needs. AI can streamline many of the manual and bureaucratic aspects of healthcare making the patient experience very convenient and flexible. In the long run with future advancements, AI can identify patterns and insights that can improve patient outcomes and inform healthcare decision-making.
5. Making Hospital Visits Easier: AI is reducing the physical need for in-person consultations by monitoring patients' well-being at home. AI has significantly aided in the monitoring of patients' health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

AI can play a significant role in improving interoperability and efficiency in the healthcare industry by helping to standardize data and enable seamless communication between disparate systems. With AI, healthcare providers can integrate various systems and data sources, analyze large volumes of data, and generate insights that can be used to improve patient outcomes. Additionally, AI-powered tools can automate routine tasks, such as data entry, and assist with clinical decision-making, freeing up healthcare professionals to focus on more complex tasks. With a vast and growing population, India's healthcare system can greatly benefit from the power of AI and telehealth. Making its current system dynamic and flexible according to the needs of the patient.