The meeting witnessed some very eminent and influential speakers from around the healthcare sector. The former Enforcement Director (ED) Karnal Singh who has investigated many high- profile cases graced the meeting as the Chief Guest.

Innovation is exciting and there are more innovations happening in the private sector, and with increasing technology come increased risks. With the rapidly growing technology, ranging from wireless devices such as mobile phones, tablets, and laptops to smart refrigerators, cars, and even medical devices like pacemakers, etc., it seems that the growing connections around us are difficult to detect. Therefore, the risk that comes together in operating within this brave, new and a connected world is high.

Shri Karnal Singh shared his expert viewpoint on the impact and importance of artificial intelligence, connected healthcare and need for cybersecurity in healthcare. How the digitization of healthcare is important and the rural and urban divide of same. He also insisted on the improvement of infrastructure and facilities available in the rural healthcare industry. In addition, he discussed the gap between the medical industry and government institutions where the research is needed and that we adopt mostly from our partnering and supporting foreign countries and how a change in mindset and adoption of new and improved technology can enhance the Indian healthcare. The future of healthcare is on the Internet and the Internet is vulnerable. Technology is the solution and it will come whether we want it or not. Therefore, the need of the hour is OUR PREPAREDNESS. We should welcome and be prepared for the connected network of healthcare.

An interesting session on the basic concepts of AI was the icing on the cake. It acquainted the participants with AI emphasizing on the fact that one should not get bogged down by the technology. Instead, one should focus on the use cases of it and there lies the innovation.

Often, the terms “digital health” evoke images of smartwatches or apps that can process the health data and can give a readout of parameters like heart rate, blood pressure, etc. That is a part of digital health, to be sure, but today we also focus on a newer aspect called “Precision Health” and the session “Prerequisite and journey of India to offer (precision) healthcare to all: Powered by Digital, Genetics, and AI” offered a far more expansive vision for digital health technologies, genetics and AI.

Precision medicine is an emerging approach of medicine which focuses on the cause of an illness, and not addressing the symptoms alone. Precision medicine may not be very well- known as Personalized Medicine. But they are the same. It takes into consideration individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person.

Precision healthcare improves efficiency and accuracy to healthcare treatments. With precision healthcare, doctors can potentially develop targeted and precise treatment and therapies for masses as well as for an individual. This can improve patient treatment to large populations in countries like ours.

It’s based on evidence and data which comes from a series of medical tests on a patient. Thus, the data is its most important aspect. Very soon, along with genome sequencing and health sensors data coupled with the growing amount of Big Data, patient data will create large data sets of valuable information which can be used for more tailored treatments. But as an individual, a physician is not equipped to manually analyze these newly available data sets, which is where the advanced technologies such as AI come into picture.

The challenge that the clinicians see in the adoption of AI is the gap between the technical person and a clinician in regard to understanding the implementation of “normal reference values”. For example: If the normal value of hemoglobin for a person staying at planes (say Delhi NCR) is 13.5, the value 17.5 is perfectly normal at Ladakh. Is that incorporated in the AI system? Something that works in the USA might not work in India. The doctor or a clinician will have a great role to play in case of developing the AI as he/she can only give the correct inputs for the training sets.

With the new wave of digitization, medical records have seen a paradigm shift in the healthcare industry. As a result, the healthcare industry is witnessing an increase in the absolute volume of data in terms of complexity, diversity, and timeliness. Since the healthcare experts look for every possible way to lower the costs while improving the care process, delivery and management, and so is the aim of InnovatioCuris (IC), big data emerges as a persuasive solution with a promise to transform the healthcare industry. This paradigm shift from reactive to proactive healthcare may result in an overall reduction in healthcare costs and gradually may lead to economic growth. The above-stated and many more discussion points were there that became the part of the very interactive and interesting second session on “Mitigating data security and privacy challenges for digital healthcare in India”.

Data transmission is also an important aspect of implementing technology and safeguarding it. The Digital Information Security in Healthcare Act (DISHA) is one such step taken by the Indian Government in the long journey to securing the healthcare data of patients in India.

One of the biggest challenges is the lack of availability of data in a democratic manner and it’s all in silos in short data interoperability is a huge challenge. The major concerns that the clinicians have at the moment regarding the implementation of DISHA act are that it says that no court shall entertain any complaint unless made by the Central Government or central data authority, state data authority or the person affected and there would be times when PIL (public interest litigation) is there on the data security as well. The challenges will always pertain but what we need to do is to have trust in the law and protection by it. Major challenges regarding data security or cybersecurity, in hospitals or the clinical establishments, is that we do not have implemented laws that may protect our data. With the hope that they are definitely going to come, we can only stay prepared with our changed mindsets.

They generally have a quintessential tree graphic or something ‘soothing’ as its cover picture. It compels us to think about what we are buying into, as consumers, and what is the kind of world that we are constructing for ourselves. We want to access a meditative space in ourselves, using an application on our phone as the ‘environment’.

We also live in an economy, where retreats are the new consumables. There are more and more retreats and workshops coming up which cater to the needs of ‘being with yourself’ and ‘being with nature’. We are invited into ‘other worlds’, where our mundane, fast-paced, stressful, clamorous and noisy world can’t get to us. What is it that we are running away from?

Two opposing, contradictory worlds are being created by us. And we want to be part of both. Oscillating between different time-scales.

I then ask you, what makes our digital media so indispensable? When did the need for our gadgets arise? What do they fulfill for us in our personal lives? For some of us, they have always been part of our lives, however, some of us have acquired the taste, and now become completely or partially dependent. They are the new normal because they make entertainment easy, they make time move faster. They make passing time easy for us because now we are not required to engage with material inside of us, we are not required to make our real selves visible to real people outside of our phones. We can continue to portray a fragment of ourselves, choose for how long, and in what proportion we would do so. We are also not required to say something of our own since memes offer easy grounds for momentary interactions and small-time laughs. In short, they hide our vulnerabilities from the world, neatly packaging us into individuals we would like to be at a given point in time.

Thus, even though it looks like we are closer to each other, and social media no doubt provides a means, what is happening is quite the opposite- we are not in touch with ourselves, and we are not in touch with the real feelings of people around us. What we are then becoming is a set of isolated people, who are yearning for meaningful bonds, sometimes feeling satiated, yet sometimes missing them, going haywire in our efforts, and constantly chasing them.

The possible truth is, we are disconnected from each other. Social isolation is the absence of a network of positive social relationships. The consequent feeling is loneliness- where the quality of our relationships and the lack of connection makes us feel like something is amiss, something is lacking, and the void that stares at us, reminds us, that we are disconnected from people in our lives.

Social isolation is a state- you could think of it as a description or a header to what might be going on, but loneliness is the consequent feeling. It is the experience of feeling isolated. Loneliness is a risk factor for depression, which provides humans an impetus to go and rekindle the social relationship.

Social isolation is a state- you could think of it as a description or a header to what might be going on, but loneliness is the consequent feeling. It is the experience of feeling isolated. Loneliness is a risk factor for depression, which provides humans an impetus to go and rekindle the social relationship.

Loneliness has detrimental effects on our health and well-being, it is a cause of suicidal ideation and action, high mortality rates and substance abuse. (Hawkley and Cacioppo, 2010). So here is what you can do-

• One, tell yourself that you are going to be away from your gadgets for the stipulated amount of time in your day. You need to find your own balance between your own time, and your time for your friends and loved ones.
• Two, when you set aside detox time, stick to it. Make realistic goals, start small, and push yourself to a realistic limit. Try not to fall back on your targets.
• Three, start noticing how many times you use social media for mindless scrolling. Don’t judge yourself but just watch yourself. Some instances, you would maybe start seeing that some thought made you uncomfortable, maybe you thought of an upsetting memory, or you wanted to distract yourself from something which is burdening you in some way.
• Fourth, trust yourself. Find your own goals, strategies, and find out what you gravitate towards.

It must be noted that not all use of gadgets isolates us. It has shortened distances. We can connect with our friends, and family anywhere in the world. We can ask our groceries to be delivered to our doorstep, we can communicate faster (while we keep getting more and more impatient). But, as we go on with our daily lives, we must take account of our feelings, habits, thoughts and emotional highs and lows, so that their reasons can be examined.

Conclusively, carrying the burdening feeling of isolation and loneliness is different from solitude. Solitude has known to be an enriching time for ourselves, where we can heal, take care of ourselves, allow our minds to meander, even safely let ourselves drift into boredom, which can provide stimuli for creativity and reflection. Therefore, not all appearances of loneliness are necessarily grim, some are there to take care of ourselves.

In the digital age, we must also not be naive enough to think we want to create a world where gadgets and advances in technology don’t exist. Watching objects go obsolete perhaps threatens the human mind at a fundamental level, but the pace of the world is a reality we must accept.

It’s only human to look for, and ready ourselves for meaningful and supportive relationships. So, when you feel that thud in your stomach, and you feel anxious and alone, look up and strike a conversation!

About the author

Ayushi Madan is a trainee psychoanalytic psychotherapist, with an interest in contemporary discourse. She is also a trained in Odissi dancer and juggles between the two. In her free time, she gobbles books and explores Hindi poetry.

1. SPEACTRAL INSIGHTS

Pathologists in India don’t lead an easy professional life. And since senior-level pathologists in India are way short in numbers to serve the 120,000+ pathology labs across the country, the work pressure on them is unexceptionally high. There are also several occupational hazards due to the laborious manual process of operating and viewing through the lenses on a microscope for such long time.

Startup firm Spectral Insights aims to come in rescue of pathologists by providing high quality digital copies of slides. The company insists that the technology they are using isn’t new as it’s available in the developed world but unaffordable by labs in India.

So in this light the company has built an affordable automated microscope that makes digital images which are available to pathologists on a computer screen, either locally or over the Cloud. The company also builds various tools to help pathologists make rapid and informed diagnosis, thus increasing their productivity while raising the quality of the outcomes for the patient.

2. CARDIAC DESIGN LABS

It is estimated that India has a ratio of 64 million cardiac patients to 4000 cardiologists. Cardiac Design Labs designs and deploys intelligent devices which help in bringing advanced diagnostics beyond large hospitals. The company has developed a wearable device called MIRC aM (Mobile Intelligent Remote Cardiac Monitor) which is capable of providing real time advanced cardiac diagnosis and monitoring in remote settings. The company believes MIRCaM will bridge the doctor patient gap. Resting ECG which is the prevalent method for diagnostics at small hospitals is only good at detecting patients whose heart problems are acute. However, often many cases with early symptoms go undetected. MIRCaM is designed to solve this problem.

3. FORUS HEALTH

Forus Health is a medical technology startup founded by a group of engineers with the goal to eradicate avoidable blindness. According to data provided by the company, 80% of blindness in the world could be saved if screened and treated early. For this, Forus Health has built an imaging platform called 3nethra, a portable device for screening common eye problems.

Here, IoT helps in conducting remote diagnosis. The images are screened in remote locations and doctors in towns and cities grade them and the patient gets the report back in their respective locations wherein all this happens over the Cloud.

So far 3nethra has helped in more than 300,000 remote reading and reporting and has been able to touch around 150 locations. They aim to cover 3000 locations in coming years.

Want to write for InnoHEALTH? send us your article at  magazine@innovatiocuris.com

Read all the issues of InnoHEALTH magazine:
InnoHEALTH Volume 1 Issue 1 (July to September 2016) – https://goo.gl/iWAwN2 
InnoHEALTH Volume 1 Issue 2 (October to December 2016) – https://goo.gl/4GGMJz 
InnoHEALTH Volume 2 Issue 1 (January to March 2017) – https://goo.gl/DEyKnw 
InnoHEALTH Volume 2 Issue 2 (April to June 2017) – https://goo.gl/Nv3eev
InnoHEALTH Volume 2 Issue 3 (July to September 2017) – https://goo.gl/MCVjd6

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