As in many fields of human endeavour, AI and Machine Learning are starting to play a major role in healthcare and medicine. Faster and accurate diagnosis and prognosis of diseases using Machine Learning models enable doctors in freeing up time from preliminary diagnostic chores which can be used by them for more human interaction with patients and more efficient patient care. Often times sophisticated medical equipment and specialist doctors’ advice is not available in rural and remote areas of the country. Automating preliminary diagnostic procedures with reasonable accuracy using low cost data collection devices and simple AI models in the field enables healthcare professionals to reach large number of patients in these areas. Making access to many disease screening tools for the low income masses, especially in a developing country like India, helps save significant number of lives.

Advanced precision AI tools such as robots assist surgeons in conducting more successful surgery on patients. Discovery of new drugs using Machine Learning models on billions of biological data helps reduce discovery time and results in more effective medicines. Machine Learning models can also be used alongside massive genome sequencing data to provide personalized medicine with more successful treatment.

IIT Bhubaneswar is working with AIIMS Bhubaneswar and other premier medical universities/hospitals in India and abroad to conduct long term research on AI/ML for medicine in many disciplines such as oncology, ophthalmology, general surgery, medicine, haematology, community medicine and others. AHRC is also working with premier medical colleges and hospitals to digitize their large records databases which is crucial in building accurate ML models.