AI won't replace doctors, but doctors who don't use AI will be replaced: Sangeeta Reddy of Apollo Hospitals

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the medical sciences will be beneficial for the early diagnosis of a disease, however, it would not replace the usability of doctors, an expert said on Monday, while also adding that those doctors who do not use AI will be replaced.

In an exclusive interview with ANI, Sangeeta Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo hospitals said, "Artificial intelligence is useful in early diagnosis. The incidence of disease will come down and the quality of care will go up and we will see universal access to care."

"AI won't replace the doctors but those doctors will be replaced who don't use Artificial Intelligence," she added.

The expert said that a disease cannot be cured by code (used in the AI) and that there will always be a requirement for nurses and doctors.

Detailing the importance of AI, she explained further about the purpose behind two days conference with international healthcare professionals.

"Basically we have been conducting this conference of transforming healthcare with IT and patient safety for the last 9 -10 years and the ideology is really that healthcare is transforming at a very rapid pace and technology is enabling that transformation," she said.

The expert further explained the use of the hospital information system with no errors.

"Whether it's in the arena of patient safety or quality, in standardised pathways in hospital information systems, all these are helping to do the same process in a repeated manner perfectly with no error," she said.

Reddy further stressed that patient safety increases when there is a minimum error.

" Whether it's in the arena of patient safety or quality, in standardised pathways in hospital information systems, all these are helping to do the same process repeated manner perfectly with no error. And therefore when you minimise error, you increase patient safety. So that is the hospital Information System portion, but the world is going beyond that. So as I said earlier, care is shifting care is moving from the hospital to the clinic from the clinic to the home from the home to a 24x7 ubiquitous access to care which is enabled by the mobile phone," she said.

She informed that on February 5, the hospital launched a Clinical Intelligence Engine for all doctors for free.

"On February 5, our Chairman's birthday, we launched and gifted to India. Clinical Intelligence Engine (CIE) will be free for all doctors. This is the beginning of an AI engine, which can prompt a doctor on what is the best and most appropriate care. I want to highlight this here that this is not for individual patients," Reddy said.

"So like the example I gave earlier, if a patient has a cough, you know you will say it is a dry cough. How many days, and what are the symptoms? Is it bronchitis? Are you in Delhi as the pollution levels are high here? But maybe also that patient was treated for lung cancer one month ago. So his doctor will know all these things. Therefore this tool is not for the public, but it is given free for use by any doctor in India to assist them in treating better and over the years this engine will become more and more powerful," she said. (ANI)
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