'India has potential to be AI leader in health sector'

Bengaluru: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is set to be a game changer in warfare and the cutting edge technology is now changing the scenario in medical research. The slow percolation of the technology into healthcare is expected to advance healthcare development. HealthMinds is one such start-up healthcare advisory company that offers integrated healthcare solutions to leading organisations.

Dr Chinmaya Chigateri, Director and CEO, HealthMinds Consulting through its offering called Orci.ai is enabling cutting edge medical research for digital health and medical devices companies.

Sharing his thoughts he says India has been one of the pioneers in medical AI in the global scenario, but feels there is a tremendous opportunity for India to bring out more such products.

"We help companies to procure data sets that are compliant with all regulatory requirements from trusted and credible sources. These data sets are then used by companies to train their new AI algorithms, thereby leading to development of new medical technologies. Additionally, we also help companies with validation studies, secondary data mining from credible published medical literature that are also extremely valuable for healthcare AI companies. There are a lot of companies that have built AI products being used by global customers. All these products have stood the rigor of US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) regulations and have been cleared by it for usage in hospitals. While we do have these companies out there, I feel there is still tremendous opportunity for India to bring out more such products. While this is a national ambition, we need more companies like ours to be a support system to such companies so that they can focus on product building while we provide all the research advice and data services for them to reach their goals," Chigateri explains.

Structured Research Enhancement Program (STREP) by Healthminds is designed to help doctors and medical professionals by handholding them in their research journey. Before starting Healthminds, Chigateri worked abroad in some of the best laboratories, both as a student as well as a scientist. This exposed him to what pioneering medical research entails.

"While no one can ever dispute that India has research institutes that are on par or better than most universities and research institutes abroad, we still are quite low on the number of original studies and publications compared to most other countries that are of our size and capability. These statistics are a reflection that in India almost all of the innovative research is concentrated in a handful of institutions, while others are severely lagging," he tells The Hans India.

Explaining the program, Chigateri adds, "Here, our aim is to bring research closer to professionals in medical institutions who for many reasons are unable to undertake research activities, primarily due to lack of time, although there exists a deep interest to do so. Our expert scientists help them develop innovative projects and study protocols, provide data collection services through our technology platforms and finally assist them in analysis of their research data and publish such studies in high impact and credible scientific journals."

One of the projects which the Healthminds is excited about is aiding the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) in launching their e-journals. The Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences has always had scientific journals that they have been publishing over the years. It is really not the first time they are undertaking such an activity. Chigateri remarks that the RGUHS leadership, especially the Vice Chancellor, Dr. Sacchidanand, has been a great proponent of modernising the entire system with the use of technology platforms to enable medical professionals to publish in the RGUHS journals with ease and for better dissemination of the journals globally.

"Healthminds will be a key partner to RGUHS in this endeavour by deploying our journal management software called Journal Grid, to make the entire process technology enabled. We will also be assisting the university with editorial office functions, led by our team of experienced researchers and production editors. We will be working under various editorial boards composed of top most experts in those fields to take the journals of RGUHS to greater heights. I feel it is indeed my pleasure and opportunity to serve my alma mater in an area that I am extremely passionate about. I feel this will be one of flag-bearer projects in the future," he adds.