Google Helping Apollo Hospitals Build A Clinical Intelligence Platform With Its AI Tech

In its initiative to leverage technology to improve healthcare space in India using Google Cloud AI and ML technologies, Google on Monday (December 19) said that it has collaborated with Apollo Hospitals to build a clinical intelligence platform.

The tech giant said that the clinical intelligence platform would help doctors in not only solving common disorders but also rare diseases using Google Cloud AI and ML technologies.

“The Google Cloud data platform is managing the data of 40 Mn patients to understand and serve them better. The ecosystem is now widening because the insights that are available are data-based clinical insights, so the trust between patients and doctors is significantly higher,” said Bikram Bedi, MD of Google Cloud, India.

Bedi was speaking at the Google for India 2022 event, in which several new initiatives by the company were announced in which AI would be used to cater to the evolving digital needs in the country.

Dr Sangita Reddy, Joint MD at Apollo Hospitals, said that in its pursuit to bring healthcare to the doorstep of its patients, the hospital chain is partnering with Google, looking at AI and ML models, and finding ways to understand conversational medicine.

Reddy said that while it is often thought that tuberculosis is a disease India has cured, there are still 23 Lakh patients suffering from the disease in India. 

“Apollo Hospitals is working with Google on an AI piece where the X-ray images are analysed…Many healthcare institutions around the world have doctors who can encapsulate their knowledge into an AI module,” she said.

The project is expected to enable radiologists to view X-rays of patients at the touch of a button, anywhere in the world. Apollo Hospitals and Google are working on various such projects, Reddy added.

Google has been quite active in the healthcare industry globally and Google Cloud Healthcare Data Engine has been one of the major parts of this initiative.

Besides its projects to improve the healthcare segment in India, Google also announced that it would deploy AI and ML technology in the agriculture sector, to support vernacular languages, and for various other societal needs.

The tech giant also said that it is investing $1 Mn in ‘Responsible AI’ to provide grants to the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, for establishing the first multidisciplinary centre for Responsible AI. 

This centre is expected to foster collective efforts involving researchers, domain experts, developers, community members, policy makers, and more, to get AI right and localise it to the Indian context.

The company also announced Google for India Digitization Fund to support early-stage and women-led startups.