This blog post was written by Dr. Maryam S. Jaffer, Director Data and Statistics, Emirates Health Services; Dr. Bashar Balish, Senior Director, Cerner; and Michel Ghorayeb, UAE Managing Director, SAS. The future of health care has never been more exciting. Artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics have captured center stage for any business planning on surviving and thriving. Given the pace of technological development, AI is transforming the future on an unprecedented scale. And that includes the future of health care.

With the Covid-19 pandemic hitting hard and social distancing becoming a vital norm, this opens the door for using more robots to provide health care services to reduce in-person contact between the health care workers and the patients. Giovanni Traverso, an MIT assistant professor of mechanical engineering, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and also the senior author of the study said, that they were actively working on robots that can help provide health care services to maximize the safety, of both the patients and the health care workforce. Traverso and his colleagues after the Covid-19 began last year, worked towards reducing interaction between the patients and the health care workers. In this process, they collaborated with Boston Dynamics in creating mobile robots that can interact with patients who waited in the emergency department. But the question here is, how patients are going to respond to the robots?

The rising wave of the pandemic and the record number of cases has made it imperative for governments worldwide to identify innovative ways to track, detect, and diagnose COVID-19 cases and prepared for such a crisis in the future. Since the beginning of the outbreak, it has become challenging to track spikes in the coronavirus cases and predict their impact on the community. The contagious virus resulted in uncertainty in every aspect of human life. And it has become soon evident that to tackle the gravity of the situation and be ready for such a future crisis, an extraordinary effort is required. In the last twelve to fourteen months, much research and analysis have been done on discovering the best ways to curb the coronavirus.

Like many countries, China has a health care problem. Changing demographics and lifestyles mean demand for health care is outstripping growth in medical resources and its cost is rising faster than the insurance premium. With 250 million people over the age of 60, the world's most populous country is ageing. Diseases associated with more affluent societies, such as cardiovascular conditions and diabetes, are on the rise. China has 400 million chronic disease patients whose treatment costs 70% of total health care resources.

The scarcity of health care resources is a long-standing, persistent global issue that is increasing with the worldwide aging population [1]. Possible approaches toward alleviating this scarcity include applying a sharing economy model to the health care industry [2]. The concept of sharing has been incorporated into a range of commercial activities related to daily life, such as retail and transportation. The health care system has also been influenced by the globally growing trend toward a sharing economy [3] and will likely advance with these trends in the near future. Such foreseeable trends continually accompany the integration of innovative technology in the emerging big-data era, including artificial intelligence (AI). Decision making on global issues requires new technologies based on AI techniques [4].

NEW DELHI – Japanese companies are looking to tap India's medical market with funding and technological solutions to make health care more accessible in the world's second-most populous country. Japan-based venture capital firms like Spiral Ventures and India Japan Partnership Fund LLP are either funding local health tech startups or exploring new investment opportunities in the health care sector, and electronics giant Panasonic Corp. is offering solutions to improve rural health care. India has a huge health care gap between rich and poor and mismatches between doctors and patients. The situation is made worse by low government spending on health care at 1.3 percent of gross domestic product, the lowest among the BRICS grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Spiral Ventures has invested in four health tech startups that offer digital solutions for the local market and is scouting for more such startups in which to invest, according to a top company official.

Remote medical consultation services that connect doctors and patients via smartphones and other devices are spreading across Japan, with their popularity boosted by recent deregulation of telemedicine. Under deregulation in April, health insurance can now be used for such consultations, and health care startups are expected to further accelerate the development of remote health care services that use artificial intelligence amid wider accumulation of health data on individuals. The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry unveiled its vision for developing and utilizing a health care database to support telemedicine applications for remote diagnosis, remote treatment and telesurgery in its proposal titled "The Japan Vision: Health Care 2035," along with changes in the social environment, including a rapidly aging population and the advancement of medical technology. As an experiment for remote consultations, this reporter tried using the health care mobile app called curon, which is operated by Tokyo-based health care startup Micin Inc. After explaining via smartphone that "I have been taking large amounts of painkillers because I have been bothered by frequent headaches and fevers recently," a doctor., who appeared in a videophone call replied, "You'll lessen the strain on your stomach and kidneys if you change your medication."

A new artificial intelligence platform has demonstrated its ability to provide health advice that is as good as a human doctor's, according to research published on the preprint server arXiv.org. The technology, which has been developed by British company Babylon Health, takes the form of a mobile phone app, or website, that patients interact with via a chat service. The AI system has been put through rigorous testing that took place in collaboration with the U.K.'s Royal College of Physicians, as well as researchers from Stanford University and the Yale New Haven Health System. Part of this testing involved the AI taking a medical diagnosis exam that trainee primary care physicians in the U.K. must pass to be able to practice independently. Remarkably, the AI doctor scored 81 percent on its first attempt.

A new artificial intelligence platform has demonstrated its ability to provide health advice that is as good as a human doctor's, according to research published on the preprint server arXiv.org. The technology, which has been developed by British company Babylon Health, takes the form of a mobile phone app, or website, that patients interact with via a chat service. The AI system has been put through rigorous testing that took place in collaboration with the U.K.'s Royal College of Physicians, as well as researchers from Stanford University and the Yale New Haven Health System. Part of this testing involved the system taking a medical diagnosis exam that trainee primary care physicians in the U.K. must pass to be able to practice independently. Remarkably, the AI doctor scored 81 percent on its first attempt.

KT will apply its artificial intelligence technologies to insurance and health care services in partnership with Lina Life Insurance, the mobile carrier said Tuesday. The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding Monday to improve Lina's digital health care services by adding KT's AI platform technologies at the insurer's headquarters in central Seoul. Under the agreement, KT's AI GiGA Genie speaker will offer users informative health care content insurance services provided by Lina, including dental care tips for kids, descriptions of medial terms and insurance bills. There are more than 600,000 GiGA Genie users as of this month, according to KT. Benjamin Hong, CEO of Lina Life Insurance (left), poses with Koo Hyun-mo, president of KT's corporate planning group after signing a MOU on artificial intelligence cooperation at Lina's head office in central Seoul on Monday. KT will also provide speech-to-text conversion and text analysis technologies to the insurer to help improve the company's call center system for customers.