Shahid Akhter, editor, ETHealthworld, spoke to Sean Narayanan, CEO of Emids, to learn more about the challenges associated with AI in healthcare and how Emids is helping with data engineering solutions through AI to build healthcare solutions.

AI: impacting healthcare
Artificial Intelligence has made huge strides in healthcare and has improved the healthcare of millions of people worldwide. Previously, it took ten years or more to identify and develop a vaccination against a disease; because data was collected from multiple countries, aggregated from different geographies, and extracted from various sources.

AI: advancements in healthcare
AI and data aggregation has tremendously helped during the pandemic. In just about a year, a vaccination against the Corona virus was identified and developed, owing to the exponential growth and advancement in technology and AI.Data aggregated and the application of AI ultimately saved the lives of millions. The pandemic was a prime example of how AI has impacted and continues to impact the healthcare industry, improving the quality of lives of millions of people around the world. A patient’s details can be available from various sources with just the use of facial recognition. This speed at which information is available has proven to be highly beneficial, especially during times of emergency. AI: challenges
However, as with any technology or any new improvement, there will be some challenges that come with it. In a big portion of artificial intelligence, there is the challenge of bias, which has worked positively for many cases, but also negatively in many cases.

Another big risk in AI is that it requires to be fed with lots of data. For example, when various data is fed about a particular type of person, there’s a high chance that it may only recognize that particular type of person. On the other hand, health related information is heavily protected. Hence, we still need to work to get AI to produce better and deliver accurate information.

Emids: journey so far
24 years ago, Emids started primarily as a digital engineering company, and moved on to support healthcare companies, which include payers, providers, and life sciences of pharma companies. Emids’ roots are in building applications and products that these companies use to help patients. In the last five to seven years, with the abundance of data, Emids has been working with many of healthcare and pharma companies to build data engineering solutions. Over time, Emids leveraged the data engineering solutions through artificial intelligence to build highly capable healthcare solutions for clients in the industry.

Emids: future plans
Emids recently hosted India’s largest ‘Healthcare Hackathon’ and solicited more than 2,000 different ideas to help the average patient have access to better healthcare solutions. This was conducted as part of the healthcare movement, that the Indian Government has been actively promoting. Emids only focuses on healthcare, and over the next five years, Emids intends to continue to build value in people’s lives by bringing together payers, providers, and life science companies at the intersection of digital engineering and healthcare, in order to bring better solutions for the welfare of all.