<p>Bengaluru: India’s healthcare system is built to treat people after they fall sick — an approach that is costly, crowded and often too late. </p><p>At the DH Bengaluru 2040 Summit, experts at 'The AI-Medtech-Frontier: Bengaluru 2050' panel discussion argued that Artificial Intelligence could flip this model by shifting care from hospitals to homes, prioritising prevention and reducing medical errors.</p>.DH Bengaluru 2040 Summit | Time to focus on implementing congestion tax and paid parking . <p>Leading the call for change, Dr Somashekhar SP, Chairman of the Medical Advisory Board at Aster DM Healthcare, GCC and India, described hospital-based treatment as "the most expensive way to make people normal again.” </p> <p>He said the future of healthcare lay in preventing disease and detecting risk early — long before patients reach hospital beds.</p> <p>"Most of today’s healthcare spending goes into sick care. Instead, we should move monitoring, screening and basic intervention into homes," he said, pointing to the rapid miniaturisation of medical devices and the rise of wearables. </p> <p>AI, he added, can reduce human error in diagnosis and triage, acting as a safety layer for doctors rather than a replacement. “A doctor using AI will replace a doctor who doesn’t.”</p> <p>Moderated by ENT surgeon and medical device innovator Dr Jagadish Chaturvedi, the panel explored how home-based AI tools could ease the load on overcrowded hospitals while improving outcomes. </p> <p>Harsh Gupta, Principal Secretary, Health and Family Welfare Department, said government hospitals struggled with technology adoption because doctors were already overwhelmed. He cited AI systems that listen to doctor-patient conversations in any language and automatically structure clinical notes. "If AI removes the documentation burden, doctors will adopt it. Without the doctor on board, no system works," he said. </p> <p>From an industry standpoint, Manish Deshmukh, CMO of Meril, said India was ready for a surge in portable diagnostics that could move screening into communities and homes — from handheld eye scanners to AI-powered chest imaging. He stressed that building tech parks and manufacturing ecosystems like Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone was key to scaling affordable home-care technology.</p> <p>Bringing the preventive vision to life, Dr Geetha Manjunath, Founder, CEO and VCTO of NIRAMAI Health Analytix, highlighted AI-based thermal imaging for breast cancer screening that works in clinics, camps and mobile settings. Such tools, she said, can bridge gaps between urban hospitals and rural communities by helping health workers identify high-risk patients early. </p>
<p>Bengaluru: India’s healthcare system is built to treat people after they fall sick — an approach that is costly, crowded and often too late. </p><p>At the DH Bengaluru 2040 Summit, experts at 'The AI-Medtech-Frontier: Bengaluru 2050' panel discussion argued that Artificial Intelligence could flip this model by shifting care from hospitals to homes, prioritising prevention and reducing medical errors.</p>.DH Bengaluru 2040 Summit | Time to focus on implementing congestion tax and paid parking . <p>Leading the call for change, Dr Somashekhar SP, Chairman of the Medical Advisory Board at Aster DM Healthcare, GCC and India, described hospital-based treatment as "the most expensive way to make people normal again.” </p> <p>He said the future of healthcare lay in preventing disease and detecting risk early — long before patients reach hospital beds.</p> <p>"Most of today’s healthcare spending goes into sick care. Instead, we should move monitoring, screening and basic intervention into homes," he said, pointing to the rapid miniaturisation of medical devices and the rise of wearables. </p> <p>AI, he added, can reduce human error in diagnosis and triage, acting as a safety layer for doctors rather than a replacement. “A doctor using AI will replace a doctor who doesn’t.”</p> <p>Moderated by ENT surgeon and medical device innovator Dr Jagadish Chaturvedi, the panel explored how home-based AI tools could ease the load on overcrowded hospitals while improving outcomes. </p> <p>Harsh Gupta, Principal Secretary, Health and Family Welfare Department, said government hospitals struggled with technology adoption because doctors were already overwhelmed. He cited AI systems that listen to doctor-patient conversations in any language and automatically structure clinical notes. "If AI removes the documentation burden, doctors will adopt it. Without the doctor on board, no system works," he said. </p> <p>From an industry standpoint, Manish Deshmukh, CMO of Meril, said India was ready for a surge in portable diagnostics that could move screening into communities and homes — from handheld eye scanners to AI-powered chest imaging. He stressed that building tech parks and manufacturing ecosystems like Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone was key to scaling affordable home-care technology.</p> <p>Bringing the preventive vision to life, Dr Geetha Manjunath, Founder, CEO and VCTO of NIRAMAI Health Analytix, highlighted AI-based thermal imaging for breast cancer screening that works in clinics, camps and mobile settings. Such tools, she said, can bridge gaps between urban hospitals and rural communities by helping health workers identify high-risk patients early. </p>
