India is not experiencing a health care crisis as people imagine it is. It has a preventive crisis in health. Full of hospitals, overloaded dialysis centres, overwhelmed cardiology wards, not due to the failure of medicine but due to millions of people being thrown into the system too late. Most people have already escalated their problem to the point it becomes serious by the time they get to know that they have a problem.
Much of such an issue is that individuals are not in fact familiar with what their own health is. Obesity is increasing, lifestyle diseases are becoming prevalent and still most of the people do not know what they are meant to eat, what they are lacking or what they are missing or how their daily routine is gradually impacting on their body. The amount of food and content people are now eating and absorbing is more than at any other time, yet it is less easily discerned than ever. They are experimenting with fads, unread supplements, detox diets and online guidance without being aware of what their own body requires.
This is the point where the largest gap in the health of India lies. The majority of the population is not negligent to health. They are just ignorant pragmatically. They can receive blood tests or annual check-ups, medical reports but the reports are normally accompanied by figures, abbreviations, and terminologies which the layman does not comprehend. The outcome is that the report is neglected, sent via WhatsApp, or stored in a drawer, and the actual problem is gathered quietly.
This is not what the existing health care system is intended to do. It is largely reactive. You feel sick, you visit the doctor, you are diagnosed and then, you are treated. That is good in disease, but it is not good in chronic problems such as diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, fatty liver, vitamin deficiencies, gut problems, or metabolic dysfunction. The conditions arise with time because of unhealthy food selection, immobility, stress, insomnia, and lifestyle disorder. The symptoms are not easily noticed before and that makes prevention even harder.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can make a significant contribution at this point. Not through substituting doctors, but by addressing the gap that the existing system is unable to handle on a large scale. Your sugar is high, your vitamin levels are low: this can be informed to you by a doctor, but in the real world, he cannot possibly observe what you eat, sleep, experience stress, and do every week. The process of closing this gap can be achieved through AI which will make health data understandable, personalised, and actionable in everyday life.
That is the opportunity that India should target. AI is not another buzzword that needs to gain popularity within health care. It must be transformed into a preventative support system that will make people realise what they are consuming, what their body is missing, what are the first signs of the disease developing, and what can still be done before the disease strikes. This type of technology has the potential of producing real results in a nation where millions of people are getting fatter, poorer and more disoriented simultaneously.
We need to develop a platform capable of digesting the nutrition data, proposing improved eating habits, early alerts due to health trends, and a coherent dashboard view of the daily nutrition and lifestyle statistics of the user.
Among the key countries in this shift is India, with the increasing number of preventable chronic disease burden and the growing ecosystem of people seeking to resolve this issue. It is not whether AI will transform health care in India or not. It already is. The real dilemma is whether we will create systems that will actually help people live healthier lives or simply systems that appear to be advanced without addressing the actual issue.
This article is authored by Shailendra Pathak, founder, Nutrolis.
