Data-driven healthcare can transform India’s medical landscape

What are the current areas in healthcare that you think require focus? 

At a larger level, preventive health care needs a lot of focus. A lot of what we see as doctors every day can be prevented. So preventive education, hygiene, and such bigger areas that can impact the health of the population need a huge amount of focus. In my view, the only people who can do this is the government. I think they are the only people who have the bandwidth and ability to address this situation so that we have healthier babies, a healthier control of infectious diseases and so many other things which are related to hygiene and the ecosystem we live in.

In lines of preventive health care, what are the long-term visions for the healthcare industry that you recommend?

Addressing what is obvious, clean drinking water and cleaning/draining stagnated water that prevents the seasonal breakouts of dengue, all such areas need immediate focus. Conditions are improving, but basic facilities like the availability of clean water and toilets still need improvement. Vaccination is another significant area through which we can implement preventative care. India is fantastic at doing this already, however, it needs to be more focused and at an addressable scale Additionally, the Indian healthcare system must focus on capturing data. Currently, we cannot roll out precise treatment programs because we lack data. A digital health invested India will be a great India as the data can be quite valuable given India’s population size, diversity and geographical and seasonal variations. 

What are expansion plans for Sparsh hospitals if there are any and are there any plans exclusively for tier two or tier three cities? 

We are expanding in Bengaluru city with tertiary care hospitals. We have two more tertiary care hospitals coming up soon. Secondly, we are also investing heavily in R&D to find solutions to larger problems with better intervention. We are focused on reaching out to tier two, and tier three through technology. We are going to do a lot of prototyping for that. We want to have a proof of concept of how we can reach these remote places through technology and give them the same quality of services as what’s given in hospitals. That’s a work in progress. We need a certain scale and volume to be able to look into these things intensely and I believe the one-word answer for that is technology. Our final game is to have a more equitable healthcare delivery which is the same quality across the geographies.

What role will the integration of 3D printing and robotic tech play in the future of orthopaedic care and surgery? 

3D printing is a great technology which has been around for a while. How well it’s adapted in healthcare was the question but I think it’s come of age now, and now we can use it in-house for the first time. 3D printing improves our ability to strategise before we take patients up for surgery in an extremely precise manner. We can 3D print an orthopaedic situation to obtain a more defined model to see what is the best way to approach it.

As a senior surgeon I can operate in one operation theatre at a time and it’ll take an hour and a half for me before I go to my next case. On a good day, I could do about five surgeries, however, with robotic assistance, I can come up with a plan for three or five operation theatres to run simultaneously. Once the planning is done by a senior surgeon like me, the execution can be done by a robot hand held by a young surgeon or technician. Technology takes over the main role and takes away the stress of executing it precisely. As long as it consistently performs, there are always people who overlook the procedure.

What is very exciting for me is that this can allow younger people to execute the solutions as precisely as an experienced surgeon. Because the world has no time for people to have 30 years of experience before they can do a consistently good job. If the planning is done through consulting seniors, mid-level, and juniors, and execution is done by robots with technical inputs then we can give consistent results to the population in the community. Additionally, why should anybody be subjected to somebody’s poor form of that day? I can guarantee you the same surgeon doesn’t give you the same kind of precision across 10 surgeries.

This I think is a huge stride as medical errors take a big toll on the health of the community. Therefore, the switch between skilled execution and man-made experience-based execution to a robotic-based execution is the future. It’s not a perfect science. Getting closer to perfection is the game.

How can the AR-VR data that’s being collected right now aid and improve the scope of research in this field, especially for cancer treatments and any under researched areas? 

There are innumerable problems, several investigations and several solutions. So what data does is that it gives us the best possible outcomes for the best decisions made with the data presented. Over time, consistently gathering data will develop algorithms that can provide better and unvarying outcomes, free from human bias or wavering thoughts.

Evidence-based solutions could be sponsored so for me, even that is a diluted strategy. In Israel, a conference revealed advanced data collection on citizens’ health, including DNA mapping. This data allows the prediction of health risks, such as heart attacks. For instance, an ambulance crew can inform you of a predicted heart attack based on comprehensive data analysis of your lifestyle and health history.

In robotic surgery, data from CT scans and outcomes are meticulously recorded, enabling scalable precision medicine across multiple hospitals. This extensive data collection allows algorithms to predict successful outcomes and can train AI to replicate experienced doctors’ decisions, drastically increasing healthcare accessibility and lowering costs.

AI can encapsulate medical expertise, transforming traditional consultations into efficient, affordable care, allowing more time for actual procedures while providing comprehensive advice for patients. This highlights the power of data and technology in revolutionising healthcare delivery.

How can such personalised medical solutions benefit the patient? 

Personalised medical science is very important because every one of us has different needs and requirements. The surgery I perform on a labourer is very different from a surgery I do for a desk worker because the desk worker’s lifestyle is different from a labourer’s. In this way, there are many customisations by profession and physical stature, so the ‘one size fits all’ philosophy doesn’t work here. An individual’s height, weight, lifestyle, DNA, general health and many other factors lead to the necessity of customisation. We cannot be dishing out the same solution for everybody. Through this difference, in the future, we aim to get the best outcomes of medical science.

What is the estimated cost of a robotic-assisted orthopaedic surgery and how can it become more cost-effective to increase accessibility? 

I think the technology cost keeps on decreasing as the numbers increase and scale increases. When we started robotic surgery it was a huge capex investment now it’s come down to opex so in every case you do it comes down. The cost has now become onethird from when we started. More usage will make the technology cheaper with the added benefits of it being error-free, precise, and customised and result in fewer complications and that itself on a larger scale is a big saving.

Is the hospital planning to scale these innovations across other specialities?

Fluorescent technology is hugely used in tumour and cancer science. All the technologies are agnostic to the speciality which is why I wanted to implement it inhouse allowing my clinicians across specialities to innovate. There are already use case scenarios in every speciality but it’ll only get better and that’s where we want to have leadership because we are going to do it in-house and marry technology to clinical science in a seamless way so that we can innovate every day.

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