BENGALURU: Artificial intelligence (AI)-based healthcare breakthroughs that support and enhance the capabilities of healthcare practitioners have now become a necessity. Kalavathi G V, Executive Director & Head - Global Development Center, Siemens Healthineers, says AI has been predicted to save 5-10% of healthcare spending, which is about USD 200-360 billion.
She told TNIE that reducing the administrative burden on frontline healthcare professionals through AI can minimise burnout and enhance retention, resulting in increased cost savings and better patient care and safety.
Siemens Healthineers has established AI expertise, future-oriented people power, vast medical data sets, and computing power needed for creating algorithm-supported healthcare solutions. “This helps health professionals implement algorithm-supported solutions to schedule appointments, manage patient health records, and documentation,” Kalavathi says.
Currently, AI is emerging as a significant driver of medical device innovation. As the technology has numerous uses in the medical field, it has the potential to alter critical sectors of the industry. Siemens Healthineers has been contributing to the field of AI for more than 20 years and we have what it takes to integrate AI into clinical routine, Kalavathi adds.
Different applications of AI include data management, diagnostic imaging, population health management, remote surgery, diagnostic and procedural AI helpers, and clinical trial design. Explaining how AI drives innovation in personalised healthcare, she says it plays a crucial role in enhancing personalised medicine and advancing precision care, hence improving patient experience.
Precision medicine uses advanced techniques to identify patients with unique treatment responses or specialised healthcare needs. Through enhanced intelligence, it assists medical professionals in the decision-making process as well. Siemens Healthineers has developed a portfolio of more than 84 AI-powered solutions that streamline tasks and automate complex diagnostics which are tailored to individual patient needs.
“We are turning big data into precision medicine. We are also working on scalable AI solutions in clinical routines to automate complex diagnostics and therapies. This initiative, called the AI Factory, is built on a robust infrastructure that includes reliable hardware, software, and expert support,” Kalavathi says.
They are also developing the digital patient twin technology that connects existing individual health information in real-time and continuously compares it with results from population studies, data from specific clinical pictures and individual disease courses, medications, diagnostics, or therapies of patients. “The digital patient twin is a long-term vision, but it is already technically feasible today in partial solutions. We believe that digital patient twins can revolutionise the field of personalised medicine,” she says.
Data security
Siemens Healthineers has partnered with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to launch the Computational Data Sciences Collaborative Laboratory for AI in Precision Medicine, which aims to develop open-source AI tools while focusing on fairness and equity in algorithm development. By integrating interdisciplinary expertise, the lab seeks to identify and mitigate biases that may arise from skewed data.
“Siemens Healthineers ensures that AI models are trained on local datasets that are reflective of the populations they serve. This localised approach helps to avoid biases that could lead to unequal healthcare outcomes across different demographic groups,” she says.