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Introducing Technology to Build Harmonized Platform. Keren
Priyadharsini, PhD I
think I have five stories to share with you all. Microsoft doesn't really
have anything to do with healthcare. In fact, when I joined Microsoft a year
ago, they asked 'Are you sure you want to join Microsoft? We have nothing to
do with health care!' But again, I think Microsoft has done some amazing work
in the field. I
think I will share with you five stories. Microsoft doesn't all about
healthcare. When I joined Microsoft in a year and a half ago, they actually
asked 'Are you sure you going to join Microsoft?' What is Microsoft to do
with healthcare? But I think they've done an amazing work, especially in
terms of research and organizational development. Microsoft came to areas
that people tend to avoid, and provided solution for problems that happened
in that area; and I want to share several stories related to this today; and
these stories are also related to public-private partnership. The
first thing that I want to address is labor cost. How can we improve
efficiency? Let's say that one doctor is able to handle up to 5000 patients.
What if that doctor is able to handle 10.000 patients effectively? You'll
reduce the cost, right? In Asia, people want to live longer; they are after a
good quality of life; and chronic diseases are increasingly common in this
region. If that's the case, then preventing someone from getting sick is the
key to the effective health care services. Our health care system should
focus in communicating with patients after they are discharged from the
hospital about what they should do to avoid getting admitted to the hospital
for another time; like in Singapore. There's a rapid increase in the
percentage of chronic diseases within ageing population; thus we need to
prevent them from getting into the hospital. It's a way to lower the burden
caused by the disease. Thus the two most important things are: prevention and
wellness. For
example, HCI in Apollo Hospital, 40 millions of people came to the hospital
just to find out that they are actually not suffering from any disease at
all. This is the kind of initiative that we need to promote. Second, it's
important to ensure that hospitals have the proper facilities to host all
patients. I have a friend who just had a surgery, and she had to stay in the
hospital for five days; but two days later I saw her at her house and I asked
what happened. She said that 'oh, they needed the bed'. Microsoft has a
technology center in Singapore, and I believe that technology can make things
easier for doctors, and lower the labor cost. When we talk about universal
health care coverage, we never make use of epidemiology as preventive and
predictive tools to lower the burden of the cost; and that's our aim now. I
want to share another stories with you. This is about cardiovascular
diseases. Microsoft first launched it as a public consortium. In health care
sector, we can no longer do everything on our own; we need to collaborate. We
formulated an agreement and we decided to share our research lab, identify a
common problem, and solve it in a collaborative partnership. We became a
consortium. For example, in cardiovascular disease, Microsoft, Apollo
hospital, and government worked together in order to formulate cardiovascular
risk score. A lot people don't realize that they have heart problem. Back
then, only people at their sixties or seventies got heart attack; but now it
happens on people at their fourties. How can we
predict that? How to find out that there is a problem that needs to be
addresses? What to do with all of these health screening data? So this is
what Microsoft did: we follow the health screening program and built a model
which can generate a risk score, a probability that an individual might
suffer from a heart attack in the next 10 years. We're not saying that the
model is 100% accurate; it's just an indication that we need to do something
in order to prevent it. The health screening program is carried out in every
villages and cities, so you don't have to do anything much, all you have to
do is to access the database and get your score, and tell the doctors to
inform the score to their patients. This is a low cost option and it's so
popular that the Indian government uses it on the whole population. Other governments
are now considering it too. The model is not something that we build on
American standard; it was built through the country's standard; it's
customized. Second,
there's a little teashop in one of the villages. Screening equipment can be
transported to these places by bicycle. Another
example, diabetes is a silent killer, and there's a diabetes epidemic
happening right now. Singapore is under alert. Using AI, we're able to diagnose
and slow down the progression of the disease. Another thing that is very
common right now is myopia in children. I have two kids; one of them is 11
year-old and the other is 9. My 9 year-old daughter suffers from severe
myopia. Cases of myopia in children are increasing. In China and Singapore
they are working to see how we can use the data to predict and prevent it.
It's something that we can do with the data now. The data is already there
and it's just how we make use of that data using technology; and it's cost
effective. Something that's easy, effective, and quick. And
then we have cataract and glaucoma. My mother in law came to Singapore to
have cataract surgery. After the surgery, she still can't see. If we can
predict the outcome probability of the surgery, we don't have to waste our
resources. So through the data and AI, you can actually predict the outcome
of the cataract surgery. Microsoft has the AI, and it can be used easily,
it's jut like plug and play. It's not expensive,
but very impactful. Portable, easy to use, and quick to implement. By using
this AI, you can get the result in three minutes, and there will be doctors
on the spot that will advise you on what should you do next. This is very
cheap, the AI doesn't differentiate, the rich and poor can get the same
treatment; with quick, efficient, low cost, easy to implement. That's
how technology becomes a bridge. In hospitals, by utilizing the data, we can
predict types of medications, the cost of the medication, and to which
doctors we should send this patient to. Using AI, we are also able to predict
fraud; we can tell which doctor prescribes excessive medicines, and which
patients admitted during the night to cut the queue. As
for the last one, I want to share about genomic diseases. We are able to
identify the population with a certain types of common standard. They started
collecting data to able to diagnose what kind of disease that will be
prevalent in the future. So Microsoft has interesting philosophy. What if you
can predict an outbreak before it happens? The last one is our philosophy;
and we need to start executing it from the small scale, and make the program
inclusive. Thank
you. |
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