Centre for Internet & Society

This Report provides an overview of the proceedings of the Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and healthcare in India: Looking Forward (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Roundtable’), conducted at The Energy Resource Institute (TERI), in Bangalore on November 30, 2017.

Edited by Roshni Ranganathan


The Roundtable consisted of participants from different sides of the AI and healthcare spectrum, from medical practitioners, medical startups to think tanks. The Roundtable discussed various questions regarding AI and healthcare with a special focus on India.

The Roundtable discussion began with the results of the primary research conducted by CIS on AI and healthcare. CIS, in its research, identified three main uses of AI in healthcare - supporting diagnosis, early identification and imaging diagnosis. The benefits of AI were - faster diagnosis, personalised treatment and the bridging of manpower gap. Questions regarding medical ethics, privacy, regulatory certainty, social acceptance and trust were identified as the issues or barriers to the use of AI in healthcare. The cases chosen for study were IBM Watson (used by Manipal Hospitals in India), Deep Blue (used by the NHS UK), Google Brain (used in the Aravind Healthcare in India) and Sig-Tuple (an AI based pathologist assistant). CIS wished to explore the ethical side of this topic,the question of public interest and the need to protect the patient from harm. The session was then opened for discussion on the following issues.

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