Dr Azad Moopen, Founder Chairman & Managing Director , Aster DM Healthcare
What might hospital care look like after 15 years from now onwards?
Just a scenario might offer a preview:
Amelia, is planning to accompany her father, David, to an orthopaedic centre. A diabetic patient, David is admitted for a 3D printed knee joint replacement at “future-ready” hospital. Amelia was thrilled to see hospital: the care centre completely transformed from its old days when she had her dental treatment done.
A Virtual Care Assistant, named Joy, was assigned to David on his first pre-operative visit and waiting for him at entrance today. David’s pre-admission formalities and documentation was processed automatically even before his arrival.
He was directed to a smart OR ward, which was ergonomically personalised, soothing, and illuminated as per his drawing room specifications. A wearable ring prescribed to him immediately integrated with his bedside monitors and provided him access to his blockchain enabled; cloud secured longitudinal health records from past years.
An AI assistant, Joy, simulated a care plan for his procedure and discussed Do’s and Don’ts during procedure with him. David was very happy with his experience and shared it with his 10-year-old niece in Canada, Amanda, and his prior physician Dr. Weber in just few clicks.
Amelia noted the complete transformation of old nursing stations into surgical AI assistants, a robot, delivering the medications, capturing voice instructions, and converting EMR notes into digital prescriptions, non-invasively monitoring glucose levels and alerting physicians about David’s vitals every 30 minutes.
Most of the routine orders and charting are remotely confirmed by Dr. Smith, David’s surgeon, who prescribed him post-discharge care plan using predictive analytics of his records, glucose levels and his drug dosages.
On procedure day, Dr. Smith could guide operating surgeon via telepresence; Amelia’s younger sister was able to visualise the procedure in 3D, thanks to recently installed mixed reality tool in OR. Dr. Smith was very happy with outcome as he could intraoperatively see abnormal cyst and chart his surgical plan due to real-time AI histopathological examination. Dr. Smith recorded treatment plan as digital notes and recommended patient follow-up after three months as he could monitor his vitals daily from wearable ring.
Momentum for digital transformation, Around the world, healthcare providers are bracing themselves for digital technologies to navigate the macroeconomic and patient-to-consumer shift, continuous monitoring and testing “new normal”.
These rapidly evolving technologies are transforming hospitals and care continuum from conventional aging infrastructure to “health system without walls”
Aster DM Healthcare is one of the largest private healthcare service providers operating in multiple GCC states and is an emerging healthcare player in India.
Headquartered in Dubai with “caring mission with global vision”, Aster is striving to serve world with accessible, affordable and high tech-enabled quality care have already reached in seven countries including Qatar.
Dr .Azad Moopen, founder, chairman and Managing Director, Aster DM Healthcare, said: “Healthcare is one area where a lot of innovation is happening with the focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI). We have been actively involved in this area — during the Covid pandemic, when there was a shortage of intensivists, we connected our ICU with specialist sitting in a single location to help remote monitoring.”
Group is driving its effort through Innovation & Research Hub in India and GCC with mission to improvise the health outcomes for patients and to enhance their overall experience at all its facilities.
Dr. Satish Rath, who heads this endeavour comes with rich experience in heading digital transformations at Xerox Innovation Group, Wipro Technologies, Intel labs, and Philips Research, outlines the journey to The Peninsula. “Our main objective as an organisation has been to ensure that quality and affordable healthcare is easily available at the doorsteps of our patients. Centre is working in a collaborative manner, focusing on applied research with academia, start-ups, and industry partners on four key areas to leverage the advances in digital health research like AI, cognitive psychology, blockchain, IoT, behavioural economics and more, which is likely to produce a quantum leap for GCC patients”
“Aster’s Innovation Centre is aimed to achieve key milestones like the introduction of innovative solutions for home healthcare with a focus on digital primary care, establishing a rich eco-system of digital health partners from start-ups to academia and starting digital health, informatics and medicine as a stream for future healthcare workers,” says Ms. Alisha Moopen, Deputy Managing Director, Aster DM Healthcare
The first is to create a global start-up platform, XHealth Innovation Labs, which includes three innovation growth engines: community, capital and amplification. XHealth Innovation Labs is global accelerator and incubator program received around 700 applications in last cohort from global innovation hubs like Israel, UK, Sweden and USA. Its XUltra program is funded by silicom valley semiconductor giant to accelerate AI based health companies. Thematic based collaborative projects through its XLegend program provides potential opportunities to incubated start-ups to work with industry and academia, such as Roche, Tel Aviv University, Mindup16 Isreal (anchored by IBM, Medtronic and Pitango and Rambam Hospitals).
“There is no better way to navigate the complexities of working in healthcare than to get hands-on experience in an active health system like Aster. By spending three months embedded in a Aster’s care environment, companies gain a deeper understanding of the context and environment of their potential customers.” Said Dr. Satish Rath.
The second is to leveraging data to build state-of-the-art AI algorithms. AI require immense amounts of data to learn—in most cases, the more data the better. Hospitals and research institutions need to combine their data reserves if they want a pool of data that is large and diverse enough to be useful. But the idea of centralising reams of sensitive medical information in the hands of tech companies has repeatedly — and unsurprisingly — proved intensely unpopular. As a result, research on diagnostic uses of AI has stayed narrow in scope and applicability. You can’t deploy a breast cancer detection model around the world when it’s only been trained on a few thousand patients from the same hospital.
All this could change with federated learning. The technique can train a model using data stored at multiple different hospitals without that data ever leaving a hospital’s premises or touching a tech company’s servers. By implementing this type of system medical research organisations can successfully fulfil AI model training challenges, diversify revenue streams & foster collaborative, and enable data-driven innovation.
Innovation & Research Team of Aster along with its partners is setting up a state-of-the-art Federated Learning based simulation infrastructure which will enable AI based research programs with best possible outcomes.
Also, Aster DM Healthcare is a proud recipient of “Excellence in Digital Health/ Telemedicine award -2020” at FICCI, non-governmental advocacy group based in India, for its innovative contribution towards society. IHW council recognised Aster for its digital initiatives in Tele-triaging and Virtual OPDs (Aster eConsult) during Covid-19 with “Silver Award” in December ’2020.
Aster’s digital patient engagement program is extending support to COVID patients at home, EMR / HIS integration for seamless flow of patient information, Specialty focused teleservices and Health packages, Incorporate AI technology.
The third is to engage with industry partners, AI aims to build computer programs that can undertake tasks that would traditionally require human intelligence to complete. As per estimates global software revenue from its top cases in healthcare will grow from $3.7bn in 2019 to nearly $67 billion by 2027.
Over the past few years, the AI innovation in healthcare has been overwhelming, more than in other AI-disrupted industries. AI is seen as a helping hand to clinicians, which is validating the usefulness in value-based care models to deliver high quality care at affordable cost. Aster’s innovation hub has been receiving lot of interest from tech giants to co-develop and conduct interdisciplinary research in Aster’s world class medical facilities.
Team is currently driving several projects with global semiconductor, automobile, and software tech giants to bring new use cases to life using innovative simulation-based approach. The approach offers agile, iterative-clinical feedback and testing environment to conceptualise, design, refine and validate idea till commercialisation.
The final element is sharing knowledge to increase awareness and understanding, drive synergy and advance best care practices.
Aster’s centre collaborates with ecosystem to up skill and augments capacity in digitaltech-driven clinical care. Current associations with public and private care provider systems, Aster plans to provide professional education needs in training researchers in innovative digital product development and use in delivering future care.
The care centres of the future may look quite different than today. Aster’s innovation and digital health ecosystem is committed and aligned in the direction of realizing The Qatar National Vision 2030. Qatar is already spearheading efforts within the region to implement digital health. COVID-19 has underlined the importance of digital health globally, especially in the diagnosis, awareness and treatment of patients.
Qatar’s preparedness with Ehteraz application during pandemic has posed a unique model for global public health. Further, the nations’ leap in successfully implementing public electronic health records in primary, secondary and tertiary care has been role-model for “future-ready” health systems. With progressive policies in place and seamless information integration, providers are empowered to leverage advanced digital tools like clinical decision, patient monitoring and hospital systems.
Aligned with the Qatar National Health Strategy 2030 to build a vibrant, healthy and productive society, Aster Innovation aims to partner in this vision by delivering healthcare with a commitment that defines every aspect of digital clinical care. In line with the NHS theme for the future of healthcare in Qatar, Aster group will focus on leveraging digital healthcare, collaborative innovations and continuous professional growth programs to build a comprehensive world-class healthcare system that is effective, affordable and universally available to all citizens.
Commenting on the occasion, Dr. Satish states: “Today, there are many inefficiencies being experienced by the healthcare industry. We can see a high-level of synergy and innovation-ready public health infrastructure in Qatar. Aster’s innovation hub is forging way to reach far more people who are not able to access health system due to socioeconomic, knowledge or affordability constraints. Leveraging AI, IoT, blockchain, cognitive computing we can address these difficult segments in sustainable way. We will be tapping into the Qatar’s rich evolving entrepreneurship culture of start-ups and academia in a collaborative model that we can curate and co-create for better future. Simultaneously, we will be preparing the digital health aware/ empowered workforce in collaboration with government and teaching institutions”.
Aster DM Healthcare started its Qatar operations in 2003; and now operates five medical centres, six pharmacies, one full-fledged diagnostic centre and multi-specialty Aster Hospital. Aster Hospital Qatar is a 50 bedded specialty hospital, which is designed keeping in mind the comfort of its patients. Situated on Old Airport Road, the new hospital is equipped with advanced facilities and emergency services for providing quality healthcare services. The spacious interiors, advanced facilities and healthcare experts will create a positive ambience that’s conducive to healing. Aster Medical Centres and pharmacies are located at residential and business districts including C - Ring Road, Al Hilal, Al Rayyan, Al Khor and Industrial area.
