In India whenever a person is detected facing medical conditions, most of them are likely to dodge the treatment process either due to the inability of fulfilling the demanded expenses or due to lack of time to complete the treatment. However, this practice is about to change with the help of artificial intelligence. The concept is becoming a fundamental component of the healthcare business globally. Multiple healthcare startups are started in the past several years and even some have come out with AI equipment to filter the condition through non-invasive methods with great accuracy in a couple of minutes. By combining medical sciences and computer engineering, self-dependent tools are developed which are capable of catching anomalies that even a human eye can miss.

AI technology can bring down the drug discovery cost by analyzing huge data points in a fraction of the time as compared to humans.By Ashu Kajekar, CEO, 7EDGE Internet Imagine a doctor who can predict a patient's illnesses in advance and prescribe preventive medication in the blink of an eye. Or a computer in a research facility, that ingests and analyzes complex drug chemistries using deep learning algorithms to discover new medications. For that matter, an integrated neural network in an eye hospital that scrapes patient data for signs of eye diseases. Or even better, imagine a chat bot app in your smartphone asking you if you still have the stomach ache from yesterday and if you would like to consult a doctor on a particular day. While all may seem far-fetched, this vision of healthcare is not too far off.

Technology is rapidly changing how people do everything; from taxis to food delivery, from dating to media consumption and everything in-between. There have been many visible ways in terms of technology impacting healthcare. From microscopes & stethoscopes invented hundreds of years ago, to MRI machines today, to the goal of creating a Tricorder in a Star Trek-like future, technology is making sweeping changes in healthcare and undoubtedly India will be a big beneficiary. The main drivers, today and in the future, are smartphones, always-on connectivity, big data and artificial intelligence (AI). In the way regular mobile phones became ubiquitous, soon most people in India will have powerful and connected supercomputers in their pocket as prices for smartphones and internet access continue to drop and become more accessible.