HealthCare Global Enterprises Ltd (HCG) on Monday announced that it has deployed Sigtuple's AI100 making HCG the first hospital chain to equip the Hematopathology labs across its network with AI-powered screening solutions for cancer detection and disease management. According to the company's press statement, SigTuple's AI100 is the premier solution for AI-assisted digital hematopathology. It is also the only digital hematopathology solution available that is economical and robust enough for wide-scale adoption, it claimed. "As manual microscopy is still the standard in diagnosing several critical disorders like cancers, infections, etc., in the absence of a pathologist at site in laboratories outside urban areas, these samples need to be shipped to central reference laboratories for review. Apart from the logistic challenges and associated delays in turnaround times, there is also limited expertise available for providing high quality diagnostics at remote locations," it stated.

India has made significant advances in the field of medical sciences, in the availability of both, therapeutic and diagnostic solutions for numerous disorders. However, companies are now focusing on strategies that can diagnose medical conditions within minutes. This would enable a rapid onset of therapy and this saves human life. They have introduced a solution that can facilitate rapid diagnosis of a patient's medical condition. Here, medical data of a patient is obtained immediately through smarter, online technology.

"In 1998, Tata Motors' tryst with destiny in the passenger car business began with the launch of Indica. Despite all the attention, Indica failed to sizzle, with sales falling 20% the next year as customers complained that the car was rolled out despite glitches. Tata Motors carried out a survey to identify the problems, and discovered that the components being procured from Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers were of sub-standard quality. Amit Bhingurde, chief operations officer, TAL Manufacturing Solutions, a Tata Motors subsidiary, explains the reason: 'The manufacturers were not able to produce high quality components as they couldn't afford automation'." The need of automation is the result of today's phenomenon - Artificial Intelligence.

Ever since a Dutch cloth merchant accidentally discovered bacteria in 1676, microscopes have been a critical tool for medicine. Today's microscopes are 800,000 times more powerful than the human eye, but they still need a person to scrutinize what's under the lens. That person is usually a pathologist -- and that's a problem. Worldwide, there are too few of these doctors who interpret lab tests to diagnose, monitor and treat disease. Now SigTuple, a member of our Inception startup incubator program, is testing an AI microscope that could help address the pathologist shortage.

How many doctors does it take to tell you how you're doing? The answer could soon be, none. Scientists and researchers across India are exploring the applications of artificial intelligence in health care -- from helping diagnoses illnesses to monitoring critical care. "Artificial intelligence -- or cyber-physical systems, as I like to call them -- can collect digitised data or generate data, analyse and make decisions based on it," says professor Ashutosh Sharma, secretary of the union government's department of science and technology. "A big advantage of AI in healthcare is that it can help where there is a scarcity of human resources, which is the case in many rural areas," adds Dr P Anandan, CEO at the Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Wadhwani AI).

How many doctors does it take to tell you how you're doing? The answer could soon be, none. Scientists and researchers across India are exploring the applications of artificial intelligence in health care -- from helping diagnoses illnesses to monitoring critical care. "Artificial intelligence -- or cyber-physical systems, as I like to call them -- can collect digitised data or generate data, analyse and make decisions based on it," says professor Ashutosh Sharma, secretary of the union government's department of science and technology. "A big advantage of AI in healthcare is that it can help where there is a scarcity of human resources, which is the case in many rural areas," adds Dr P Anandan, CEO at the Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Wadhwani AI).

It's no coincidence that at about the time that Google CEO Sundar Pichai has professed the company was moving into an'artificial intelligence first' world, the Internet giant is backing AI start-ups in India to help it achieve that goal. Young ventures that analyse medical data to reduce human error, gather insights to help travellers and provide cooking apps for different culinary needs, are some of the AI companies that Google is nurturing at its'Launchpad Accelerator.' "The pace at which you can solve problems is so much faster when you apply (AI)," said Paul Ravindranath G, program manager, Google India. "We have begun including companies that are meaningfully solving problems... using AI and machine learning." The firm's six-month accelerator programme matches young companies from emerging ecosystems with the best of its people, network and advanced technologies to help scale their products. It also connects them with mentors from top tech firms and venture capitalists in the Silicon Valley, U.S. In return, Google, whose parent company Alphabet Inc. reported a revenue of $90.27 billion in 2016, is hoping that its technology and cloud computing platform gets consumed by these start-ups and they build their innovation on top of them.

Robot-shaped smartphones called RoBoHoN, developed by Sharp, on display at a press preview of the Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies in Japan in October 2016. Artificial intelligence is big no matter where you are in the world, and some of the largest companies in Asia are making significant investments in AI technology. Startups across the region are exploring the ways in which AI can help people make better decisions, secure themselves against financial risk, learn more effectively, and obtain more accurate disease diagnoses. Here are four up-and-coming AI companies in Asia to watch. ADDO AI CEO Ayesha Khanna (left) appears on a panel hosted by the International Finance Corporation.

Taking care of human health is a quite intricate job that requires broad and multiple aspects of the healthcare industry to work together. Healthcare industry is already overburdened with the exploding population and lack of trained doctors. The ratio of doctor to patients in India is 1:1700 which is far higher than the recommended ratio of 1 in every 1000 patients by WHO. The spontaneous increase in the count of efficient healthcare providers is not possible. But the access to intelligent and smart technologies can enhance the productivity and precision of existing ones in serving more patients in a specific time, with the ease to improve healthcare outcomes and in lowering the healthcare expense.

The rise of a technology has Bill Gates issuing warnings of an apocalypse. It's Artificial Intelligence or AI, an idea whose time has come--it is incubating in science labs and being deployed by start-ups and industrial units alike. Why are Gates and Co. worried? Specifically, it's over machine learning, an early form of AI that has in recent years become mainstream, causing both delight and nervousness among AI experts and technology companies. AI involves building computers capable of taking smart decisions by themselves, the way humans do. Machine learning and various other sub-fields such as deep learning are the means to achieve AI. Google announced this week that it is rethinking all its products to base them on AI; it has created a new unit called Google.ai to facilitate this shift. The revival of interest in machine learning has been driven by a confluence of factors, such as the massive increase in computing power, emergence of neural networks (connected transistors that replicate the structure of neurons in the human brain) and the easy availability of vast amounts of data, thanks to the Internet. Compared to AI leaders in the Silicon Valley and China, India is a laggard but even here, nearly 300 start-ups are using some form of AI, according to Tracxn, a start-up tracker. Among dedicated AI-only Indian start-ups, 23% are working on providing solutions to multiple industries, 15% are in e-commerce, 12% in healthcare, 11% in education, 10% in financial services, and the rest in fields such as retail and logistics, according to a 2017 report by Kalaari Capital, a venture capital firm. Internet companies tap machine learning techniques for a range of uses--to recommend products for you, for instance, or to predict where cabs should be placed so that when you open your cab-hailing app, there's one a couple of minutes' drive away. Healthcare start-ups use AI to help hospitals make speedy and accurate blood reports and medical diagnoses, saving lives. Others get fashion brands and retailers to buy the right quantities of stock.