The changing healthcare sector: Using AI to provide diagnostic support to patients

New Delhi, Jan 20 (KNN) COVID-19 has completely transformed the healthcare sector through increased innovation, cross-sector partnerships, collaborative problem solving, progress in digital solutions and increased awareness of the need for and use of data. The medical technology industry stepped up to be part of solution during the local Covid-19 crisis for present and future challenges.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are playing a key role in better understanding and addressing the COVID-19 crisis. Machine learning technology enables computers to use its intelligence and read large volumes of data to quickly identify patterns and insights for accurate diagnosis.

Nagpur based Rises Analytics Solution is one such high-tech startup which is packed with various algorithms and models to use Artificial Intelligence to provide diagnostic support to the patients.

It has been founded by experienced enthusiastic professionals from India and USA with a strong leadership and execution team with vast industry experience.

After years of R&D, Rises with its analytics platform rises.AI, delivers industry solution using Artificial Intelligence and Big Data technologies.

We connected with Ms Gouri Deshpande, Founder Director of Rises, to know all about the start-up and know how they survived the challenges of the pandemic.

• How does Rises Use AI To Monitor different Progressions/ diseases inside patients.

  - --  “The rises.AI platform is as an IP (Intellectual Property), built leveraging open systems. The team is cross-functional, visionary industry experts, technologists, medical domain exporters, with guidance from metros and advisors.  Rises healthcare solutions for ‘Cancer and Pulmonary conditions including Covid-19’ are getting traction worldwide. It includes diagnostic support as an AI Assistant to the doctors, Predictions and Pandemic Modelling for decision makers.  It’s a Clinical Decision Support Software.”

• Who have you collaborated/ partnered with to make Rises.AI a solution provider?

  - --  “Healthcare system worldwide is facing challenges, as large number of patients need timely care. Not just for COVID-19 patients, but even for other conditions. For effective diagnosis they need clinical data of the patient, some form of medical imaging and confirmative tests related to the medical conditions. Rises has extensively worked on these aspects with many medical professionals and technologist.”

• On what business model does Rises work. How does it provide solutions to the healthcare sector especially when its facing the complexity of disease like Covid 19?

  - --  “The Rises AI solution helps in providing assessment of medical imaging, by mapping technical modules on the medical protocols. At first visit the rises.AI algorithms classify and categorize the patient, with respect to severity or risk score. Then creates specific report with localized the disease. For a Contrast Enhanced CT scan of breast cancer patient, with object segmentation & masking which saves the patients from multiple biopsies of the lesions. This would be boon for patients under treatment of breast cancer. In case of TB it marks the area on radiograph for conditions caused by TB, like pneumonia and opacities in lung. The algorithms are developed as Deep Learning technology based on sophisticated neutral networks trained on thousands of positive studies i.e. patient data and tuned with help of expert medical professionals.”

Post second visit the changes are tracked on imaging scans and shown in the report. For pulmonary it would be changes in e.g. pleural thickening or in case of breast cancer it would be spread & density of the lesions. The results are correlated with confirmative tests and the treatment, which would help in evidence-based management. The Rises reports are nothing but decision points, wherein the clinicians decide the course of action for treatment. In summary, the rises.AI algorithms assist the clinicians for accurate diagnosis and track the response to treatment. 

• Can Rises replace or mimic human intelligence in diagnosing complex diseases by reading data analytics?

  - --  Rises assists the radiologists, rather than replacing them. It bring in the better accuracies for reporting by the radiologists. In would make sure there are no misses, predictive analytics for risk score & comorbidity reports.  In fact, Rises solution works as engine for tele-radiology service providers where current day radiologists provide outsources services or remote reporting. Same is true for diagnostic centers, where Rises would help not just automate the analysis of medical imaging, but add lots of value with predictive analytics. Would help the diagnostic centers to grow the business with competitive advantage, cost effective models and provide new generation value added services.

• Are AI start-ups redefining the Indian industries?

  - --  “High-tech startups are already disrupting the market landscape. The data driven technologies like AI, would make lots of changes to the way it works. Especially, when its projected to be the decade of Life Sciences, Healthcare & Pharma.  The remote care would be much simplified, where in remote places there would new age medical devices including edge & IoT devices.  

• How is the hospital industry’s response towards adoption of AI software?

  - --  “Many of the hospital chains across the world have adopted some or other form of AI. But there are still lots of whitespace. There are always cohort needs, use case specific requirements and also many medical care related challenges where AI software can add value. In some parts the adoption of AI might be slow, due to either cost pressures caused by pandemic or they don’t see upfront value propositions. The very nature of health care is human centric. Lots of digitization has happened, but adoption of high-tech is still way to go. Also, multiple remote and outsourced services are used in medical world like tele-radiology and cloud based digital solutions. The adoption of AI to hospitals might be via these services. The future is for sure, the AI would be there directly or via the cloud providers or even telecom providers.

By analyzing large patient data, AI solutions can provide real-time assistance to clinicians to identify patients at risk so the decision making is fast. It will be cost saver and making it more efficient. It's playing a key role in clinical decision support as it delivers data to clinicians to aid in diagnosing, treatment planning and population health management.”

• How helpful was the software during pandemic?

  - --  “The issues during pandemic were multifold, mortality pressure, direct impact on the healthcare workers, and need of remote care, also from the care provider perspective losses due pandemic lockdown.  The AI for COVID-19 related analysis of radiographs & CT scans helped the hospital in remote care as well as second opinion for the clinicians. Same is true for rises.AI offering of Automated Decease Detection.” 

• Was your Artificial intelligence software also used to Screen for COVID-19 on CT- and X-ray images?

  - --  “The CT scan were not easy due to sanitization protocol, but much needed for some conditions like volumetric analysis of lungs assessment and administer further treatment, Rises helped with detection & response assessment for conditions like pneumonia & ground-glass opacification.”

• What is the accuracy rate of these algorithms?

  - --  “The data science technology results are demonstrated with accuracies of more than 95%, for categorization, disease detection, with bounding box & automated report, difference analysis to check response to the treatment and predictions of parameters like recovery rate.”

• Who do you work with? How has the response towards these AI software changed post covid?

  - --  Rises clientele is mainly coming from four major categories large hospital chains, healthcare systems as in Govt like NHS UK, diagnostics chains & tele-radiology services, pharma companies in clinical setup for their clinical trials. The rises.AI software solutions would be deployed or delivered via high-tech cloud, as medical devices add-ons or for that matter, seamless integration with medical software like HIMS (Hospital Information Management System) and PACS (Picture Archival and Communication System).

• Who were your incubators?

  - --  “AIC-LMCP by AIM NITI Aayog, Ahmedabad (https://aiclmcp.org/aic_lmcp.html) & Lemon Ideas.

Lemon Ideas always provided great guidance, actively helping in raising the funding and connecting to prospects.  Their leadership is very supportive with their vast market experience, from making pitch impressive & competitive, to helping in goto market strategy.”

• Start-ups are vulnerable to factors like competition, lack of funding, lack of clear metrics. How do you deal with them?

  - --  “The challenge is lack of funding at right time and terms expected by the investors.  Access to enterprise market is the key.  Now Rises is in scale up stage, some of the potential investors and large players are in discussions.”