We all agree that artificial intelligence (AI) has the power to drive development and even out global inequalities. Because it can process vast amounts of data rapidly, AI is ensuring more and more people in developing countries have access to microfinance, healthcare and remote-learning opportunities. AI helps make climate change mitigation more efficient, and can help deliver housing at a quarter of the usual costs when combined with 3D printing technology. It is easy to see how it could be a game-changer in the rapidly urbanising developing world. But AI's potential to help us achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, and to reduce global poverty is far from being realised.

The Indian medical facilities are having a tough time coping up with the necessary transformation and fulfilling people's expectations. Before the pandemic, only top hospitals in India were using health tech innovations to power their routine working system. However, things changed during the pandemic. The healthcare ecosystem that was not ready for a technological twist has to undergo rough and tough to adapt innovative products. Today, top health tech innovations are being deployed at various ends of the Indian medical front.

The telehealth and healthcare IT market has been growing in recent years, and it is expected to hit $390 billion by 2024. The 2020 coronavirus pandemic has driven the need for remote healthcare services even further, with most countries implementing restrictions that encourage the public to stay at home. In May 2020, McKinsey & Company reported that healthcare providers are seeing 50 to 175 times the number of patients via virtual consultations than they did before the pandemic took effect. But telehealth is not just a symptom of necessity. Aside from patient and doctor safety, telehealth can also have long-term positive effects on patient well-being.

Last week, we published the first two of our ten predictions in our report, 'The future unmasked: Predicting the future of healthcare and life sciences in 2025'. This week, we launch predictions three and four, 'Clinicians are empowered by new diagnostic and treatment paradigms' and'The who, what and where of work re-architected'. This week's blog provides an overview of predictions three and four. How COVID-19 is changing healthcare professional's ways of working In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare providers reorganised their staff and services and provided bespoke training to enable new ways of working. They also introduced new levels of physical and mental health and wellbeing support their staff all while attempting to deliver safe care to patients.

During July and August, UNESCO convened a global public online consultation, along with eleven regional and sub-regional virtual consultations, to discuss the first draft text of the Recommendation. It sought feedback that addressed various local concerns to achieve a truly inclusive and pluralist normative instrument. The consultations strengthened regional partnerships, particularly in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean, and provided a platform to raise further social, economic, and cultural implications of AI globally: from a data breach to hate speech and harassment; from gender bias to AI accountability; from human rights to education and climate change. Addressing over 600 submissions and 50,000 suggestions – from policymakers, international organizations, civil society, media, private sector, academia, and the general public – twenty-four internationally renowned experts will re-examine ethical concerns in the emerging age of AI and draft appropriate revisions. All voices will be heard.

The coronavirus crisis has prompted Japan to ease regulations on remote medical treatment, creating an opening for tech companies and offering a glimpse of the future of health care in the world's most rapidly aging society. As coronavirus cases spiked in April, Japan temporarily eased restrictions on remote medical care, allowing doctors to conduct first-time visits online or by telephone and expanding the number of illnesses that can be treated remotely. The changes mark a potential shake-up in one of the world's biggest medical markets, which has lagged countries like Australia, China, and the United States in telemedicine. The reforms could also help the nation grapple with both a skyrocketing health care burden and a lack of doctors in rural areas. Previously doctors were only allowed to treat recurring patients remotely, and for a limited number of diseases.

Do you trust Amazon with your life? You might have to, because the big tech companies of Silicon Valley are looking to do for medicine what they've already done for retail, publishing, finance and other sectors of modern life: they want to bring on another digital revolution. Ever since the Federal government began encouraging health care providers to adopt electronic health records a decade ago, Apple, Google and a slew of Silicon Valley startups have sought to bring about their own vision of telemedicine--turbocharged by data from wearable health-monitoring devices, artificial intelligence and smartphone apps. Apple's bio-monitoring watches and Fitbit, the wearable exercise monitor recently bought by Google, are two prominent examples of products in the market now. Other companies are readying artificial-intelligence products that could augment or replace advice from medical professionals. So far all these promising technologies have failed to bring about the kind of sweeping change that Silicon Valley has wrought in so many other industries.

Telemedicine will eventually become a more prominent part of our clinical practice, with the incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) and social media and networks, and integration with precision medicine in electronic health records. As clinicians and scientists, we should be thinking about where and how these four innovative strategies intersect, so that we can continue to not only contribute to the conversation and direction of these strategies, but also lead them. Remote monitoring of physiology is an important component of telemedicine or telehealth. If we are to care for our patients remotely in telemedicine, then we must be able to have data on which to make decisions. Some of the data come from remote monitoring, while some may come from information we may already have in electronic health records, in addition to the current history during a consultation.

Is technology a way to solve problems, or is it a way for organizations a way to make us do their work? The banks, for instance, have dressed up online services as providing customers with 24-hour service, while effectively making us do quite a lot of their work so they could lay off employees and close branches. But when technology solves our problems, it is just so useful. Last month, the app Spenderlog launched an automated shopping list that will automatically adjust to your personal preferences and lifestyle goals, by analysing your receipts, whether that is eating more fruit and vegetables, leaving out ready-cooked meals or spending your money more carefully. You don't even have to think.