Here’s how an IT leader is accelerating healthcare innovation adoption in India

A variety of digital health solutions are launched in India every year. However, few of them are adopted by doctors. To overcome the bottlenecks and accelerate the adoption of digital health innovations in the country, a leading enterprise tech leader has taken a novel approach.

In 2021, Dr. Satish Prasad Rath, Chief Innovation and Research Officer at Aster DM Healthcare, a change of sides in his organization. He joined the company’s medical college (DM Medical College in Kerala) as Founder and Head of Digital Health Department and built an incubator focused on IoT and AI in Healthcare. The incubator was founded by Rath to bring doctors and entrepreneurs onto the same platform.

Rath comes to this position with a strong technology background coupled with an in-depth understanding of healthcare. says Rath. During his time at Aster DM Healthcare he was credited with implementing AI, IoT and telemedicine projects.

Aster DM Healthcare is a healthcare conglomerate with a network of 27 hospitals in seven countries. Affiliated with DM Medical College, the hospital has more than 500 beds and more than 200 doctors of various specialties.

Regarding the challenges of digital adoption, Rath says: “In the pharmaceutical industry, doctors only get involved after a drug has been developed and approved, which works well. However, digital healthcare is a different ballgame. Physicians are not involved in the development of a solution from the start. As a result, solutions are often rejected by physicians because they are redundant, expensive, or bulky.”

Because of this, he says, “For rapid adoption of digital health solutions, it’s important to involve physicians from the start so they can provide ongoing feedback on the shape, weight, form factor, etc. of the solution.”

Bringing entrepreneurs and doctors together

“Until now, such incubators have been set up by the government in IITs and other engineering colleges. This is the first such incubator to be funded by the government’s Department of Biotechnology and set up at a medical school,” says Rath.

A medical university with an affiliated compulsory hospital is an ideal place for innovations and their rapid acceptance, says Rath. “Corporate hospitals are busy with day-to-day operations, leaving little time for new innovations. Professors in medical schools have to work on theses and research as part of their core responsibilities, which bodes well for an incubator,” he says.

“The other advantages of an incubator in such a setup are that the healthcare entrepreneurs can attract doctors as co-developers and the hospital can become the first customer of the new solution,” says Rath. “The prototype can also be tested on patients. In this way, the entire life cycle of the product is covered. This model is gradually being adopted worldwide.”

The current projects of the health incubator

The incubator is currently concentrating on a few projects.

The first concerns building interoperability between medical devices. A hospital’s IT department is opposed to sourcing medical equipment (CT scan, X-ray, EKG, etc.) from multiple vendors, even if it results in investment savings. This is because devices from different manufacturers do not communicate with each other or with the IT systems.

“By building an interoperability layer, we want to make devices manufacturer-independent. When different devices communicate seamlessly with each other, efficiency increases,” says Rath.

The second project aims to accelerate the innovation process. Innovators invariably seek data for research; they want to apply AI to data from X-ray, EMR, cancer, etc. However, patient data is confidential. Rath is working to combine data from multiple sources such as EMR, diagnostics and genomics to create a repository and is attempting to anonymize patient data so it cannot be traced back to an individual.

He expects both projects to be completed by the end of 2022.

Healthcare CIO as part of a clinical innovation group

For technology leaders in healthcare, Rath says: “The way forward is close collaboration with clinicians. Old school CIOs in traditional hospitals are feeling the heat. Your businesses are being disrupted by digital startups. The future healthcare CIO must acquire the two Ds: domain knowledge [of healthcare] and digital skills, especially AI. Similarly, doctors need to step up and train in AI as well.”

Rath adds: “In the future, hospitals will need to form a clinical innovation group consisting of a CIO as Chief Digital Officer and a physician as Clinical Innovation Officer if they want to enable impactful and innovative digital healthcare solutions and their rapid adoption.”