As Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) continue to transform Indian healthcare, technology giant Google Cloud is charting out plans to strengthen its presence in the Indian market. Bikram Singh Bedi, Managing Director, Google Cloud, India, spoke about the company’s plan for the Indian market, its investments in the region, data protection, and way forward. Edited excerpts from an interview:
What opportunities do you see for Google Cloud in the Indian Healthcare sector? How will you leverage Cloud AI and ML technologies further to multiple collaboration deals made with hospitals and healthcare institutions in the past year?
The Indian healthcare market is on a high-growth path, with a significant focus on digital transformation and digitizing how healthcare is delivered to patients. However, the adoption of AI/ML technologies in a connected world is still in its nascent stages. We have partnered with some of the leading healthcare providers in the country and enabled them to make healthcare more accessible and equitable. We are working with Apollo Hospitals to build a Clinical Intelligence Engine that can support doctors in making better diagnoses using AI and ML technology and address the most common to rare diseases.
Google Cloud's Analytical Systems will help Apollo manage the data of over 14 million patients and analyze their health patterns to serve them better. Through this, doctors will now be able to leverage data-driven clinical insights and this will help build more trust between doctors and their patients.
Also, we recently partnered with eGovernments Foundation and are enabling them to provide the technology to build TeleICUs in different districts and talukas in the state of Karnataka and Nagaland in collaboration with the respective state health departments in Karnataka and Nagaland.
We are also working closely with Manipal Hospitals, to improve patient care, clinician experiences, and improve the hospital chain’s network efficiency. Manipal Hospitals is leveraging Google Cloud’s technology to enable virtual care services across its chain of hospitals in the country, creating a new e-pharmacy platform that allows patients to order medicines directly from the hospital, and building remote patient monitoring to improve overall care. Manipal Hospitals will also use Google Cloud’s conversational artificial intelligence (AI) tools to improve customer interactions, offering patients 24/7 care.
What are the key trends and future expectations of the healthcare sector through AI cloud and the emerging growth of e-pharmacies and telehealth?
The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the healthcare industry in new ways. In record time, we’ve witnessed public health officials, vaccine developers, equipment manufacturers, and essential workers take life-saving actions and respond to the exceptional challenges of our time.
Organizations are recognizing and deepening their understanding of the structural and social determinants of health that impact patient care and health outcomes, especially for historically underserved communities. Private and public sectors are learning from, and increasingly partnering with, the social sciences, public health, biomedical informatics, computer science, public policy, and community groups around how to build more equitable and inclusive consumer products and Health IT strategies.
AI-enabled drug discovery models can eliminate months and years from the research process, which can reduce the time to develop a drug and accelerate the time to treatment for an individual patient. As just one example, consider the work on AlphaFold2 by Google’s DeepMind unit which leverages AI to predict effective protein shapes for new drugs. Technology will continue to play a key role as capabilities and platforms will transform all aspects of the marketplace.
Cell phones, wearable devices, and other technologies will provide real-time updates and notifications to patients on everything from glucose levels to payments for healthcare services. Voice recognition software will document physician and patient discussions to reduce the burden of record keeping. Real-world data will be used to simplify and confidentially recruit patients for participation in clinical trials.
Why is Google Cloud investing in India? How does it see India as a market? What is the country’s potential globally and why?
India is an important market for us and is one of the fastest-growing cloud marketplaces in the world. The services by Google Cloud are utilized by our customers to scale their infrastructure and operations for a multitude of applications. In India, we’re helping customers build a digital-first future. We help organizations deliver a data cloud that provides deep insights into their organization. We have an open cloud with the flexibility to integrate across multiple providers, so you don’t have vendor lock-in. We have a collaboration cloud to connect teams and accelerate workforce collaboration, which is vital as the world moves to hybrid working. And a trusted cloud to ensure important data stays protected.
In the last three years, we announced our partnership with several major customers including HDFC Bank, HDFC, Ergo, Jio, Flipkart, Mahindra, Adani, SuperGaming, Bharti Airtel, RBL Bank, Cryptowire, Wipro, ShareChat, Groww, InMobi, Eros Now, Voot and others.
In 2021, we launched our Delhi NCR cloud region. Delhi NCR joins 28 existing Google Cloud regions connected via our high-performance network, helping customers better serve their users and customers throughout the globe. As the second region in India, customers benefit from improved business continuity planning with distributed, secure infrastructure needed to meet IT and business requirements for disaster recovery, while maintaining data sovereignty.
Google Cloud learners in India have grown almost 7x in the last 2 years. The demand for qualified experts is huge: the two highest-paid certifications of any cloud provider are the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect and the Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer. We launched Google Cloud’s 1st cohort of the Google Cloud Computing Foundations with Kubernetes course in collaboration with FutureSkills Prime (a MeitY and NASSCOM Digital Skilling Initiative), to equip participants with the skills they need for a career in a digital workplace.
Google Cloud continues to drive customer momentum, bringing with real-time data analytics and AI. We continue to be excited about the long-term market opportunity and the trajectory of the business. Enterprises and governments are increasingly turning to us for their digital transformation initiatives across verticals.
In a country like India where there is still a lack of data protection laws, how can Google Cloud help in securing healthcare data?
To ensure that any sensitive data can be protected–no matter the scale and speed at which they operate. Two cloud capabilities—Healthcare De-identification and Cloud Data Loss Prevention—can be instrumental to meeting these needs and keeping health data secure.
With Healthcare De-ID, users can automate the de-identification of healthcare data in their native formats–no need to extract text or images. Healthcare De-ID can automatically remove protected health information (PHI) from Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) and Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) data. With Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Google Cloud has created a comprehensive set of technologies that automate the discovery, classification, and protection of your most sensitive data.