Apollo Hospitals adopting a combination of disruptive, traditional technologies: Arvind Sivaramakrishnan

Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, CIO, Apollo Hospitals believes in the technology which is effective, consistent and replicable to gear-up the clinical and operational processes. “The health system is exploring every aspect of the disruptive and traditional technologies and is cautious about picking the right blend of innovation, which has to be a healthcare driven combination” Sivaramakrishnan asserts.

Harnessing the power of the data

Apollo’s IT is heavily curbing the data generated by the multiple health records and is driving the intelligence for various clinical protocols, to facilitate adequately manage treatment options and continue to evolve the clinical effectiveness and outcomes.

“We have partnered with Microsoft, and under this partnership, we have formulated a machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithm to predict the Cardiovascular disease risk scores for individuals” Sivaramakrishnan stated. “The solution was built in collaboration between our clinical practitioners, technology team in partnership with data scientist in Microsoft. It classifies the clinical and social health information of patients and the high contributing factors leading to cardiac diseases, thereby assisting the clinicians in managing the risk factors.”

The hospital is leveraging AI, ML to effectively guide patients and clinicians so that the clinical outcomes are further increased to the highest possible levels and ensuring the best quality and safety. In this regards, Apollo Hospital is running a program named SUGAR, which is a combination of mobility, intelligence, and clinical protocols, driven by big data analytics. The program effectively manages diabetes patients, so that they are kept within the permittable range of Diabetic symptoms and disorders.

Also, the hospital’s clinicians are constantly working with the technology teams, in order to build intelligence into clinical pathways and protocols. These clinical pathways and protocols are used to administer a treatment regime.

“We are using a combination of big data analytics coupled with the clinical expertise for managing infection control and antibiotics resistance patterns for highly vulnerable patients. The advanced analytics is helping the hospital in reducing the length of the patient’s stay and prevent them from further complicating their stay at the hospital” he adds.

Reducing queues at the hospital

Digital is definitely a powerful solution to improve efficiencies in the healthcare sector. In order to streamline the patient’s appointments with doctors, the hospital had introduced a mobility solution names ‘Ask Apollo’. It is a combination of mobility and cloud-based services.

The mobility solution helps in interpreting the customer’s expectations and improve the operational efficiencies and reduces the crowd in the waiting areas.

Balance in skillsets to complement AI

AI isn’t just about the framework, it’s also about getting the right skill set. “We require high talents in terms of the clinical experiences, capable to define the problem statement and interpret the data. Coupled with the ethical clinical practices and approaches” he highlights.

Followed up with the data scientists who know… how to generate algorithms and models based on the data, and the technologist keeping at sustainable compute environment. Sivaramakrishnan says “Then we have integrated clinical quality professionals who are ensuring that this is compliant with all the ethical practices and the degree of quality that is required. Since the personalised algorithm is not the standalone piece of technology, the team constantly works to ensure that they integrate the personalized algorithm back to the standard operational practices.”

Apollo Hospitals is leveraging AI and ML as the fundamentals of their DNA. Hence, they are completely integrating, engaging with the right talents to embark on implementing pathbreaking algorithms and solutions to deliver the best healthcare services.