Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare in India: Policy Initiatives, Challenges, and Recommendations

2. Ai And Healthcare Industry In India

The opportunities for AI in the Indian healthcare sector are encouraging, and predict that by the year 2035, AI would be able to add USD 957 billion to the economy of India (Accenture, 2017). As well, the Government of India (GOI) in incentivising for the growth of AI in the healthcare sector. State Governments are also helping the start-ups by funding, for example, government of Karnataka (a State of India) has taken an initiative to mobilise INR 2000 crore (~ 300 million USD) by the year 2020 to support healthcare industries for taking help of AI. A comprehensive start-up policy for AI has been already adopted by the government of Karnataka (Pitchiah, 2017), and the integration of AI with Healthcare Sector in India has brought in considerable improvement in this sector. It has provided effective contribution towards quality, cost, efficiency and so on. Different stakeholders of India are sincerely promoting AI-integrated healthcare initiatives, such as FICCI and even the Prime Minister’s Office (Rao, 2017). It has been noted that AI-integrated healthcare initiatives in India mainly cover medical services to the rural area especially to the underserved population. This technology serves the economically weaker sections of India who are not able to afford costly medical facilities. It serves to those who are deprived of enjoying necessary medical infrastructure.