With over two and a half decades of experience in the tech industry. Vijayashree is passionate about continuous learning and is responsible for digital transformation at Omega. She is deeply invested in driving business outcomes for multinational customers through AI-driven solutions. Her recent focus is on Generative AI/LLM-based digital solutions in the US healthcare sector. Her vision is to harness AI's potential to make healthcare more predictive, personalized, and preventive.
In an extensive conversation with Women Entrepreneurs Review Magazine, Vijayashree explains the futuristic aspects that Gen AI will drive to revolutionize the healthcare sector. Shedding light on how to navigate compliance and securityin healthcare tech, she highlights the industry’s eventual move towards adopting new technology trends.
In light of the recent advancements in Generative AI and predictive analytics, how do you assess the current landscape of these technologies in the healthcare sector? What are the most pressing challenges and opportunities?
The technology revolution is transforming the healthcare industry, with cutting-edge technologies like SMAC, mobility, cloud, RPA, and AI technologies emerging. Generative AI, which is an evolution of AI, is helping AI overcome challenges and limitations, creating a complete revolution across various domains. This technology bridges the gaps between payers, providers, and patients, enhancing the patient experience. Providers can improve efficiency in their services, while payers can identify and prevent fraudulent claims. Patients benefit from improved service quality and data digitization, leading to more value-based care. For example, Omega Healthcare is involved in oncology research, helping life sciences companies accelerate cancer research and diagnosis.
However, there are challenges, such as ensuring compliance with privacy and health information (PHID) requirements to prevent data breaches. Despite these challenges, opportunities in the healthcare space are becoming more affordable and widely applicable. It is crucial to remain cautious about the security aspects of AI technologies in the healthcare sector to ensure compliance with privacy and health information regulations.
As Generative AI solutions gain traction in healthcare, what factors do you believe are driving or hindering their widespread adoption? How can organizations better align their strategies to accelerate this adoption?
Generative AI is gaining traction in healthcare, driven by advancements in automation, and digital transformationtechnologies. However, data privacy, regulatory compliance, and unstructured data hinder widespread adoption. To accelerate adoption, organizations must align their data strategies and ensure data is more consumable for AI services.
With the increased use of Gen AI in healthcare, what ethical considerations should be taken into account when designing and implementing these technologies? How can organizations address concerns related to data privacy and algorithmic bias?
The data that is fed into algorithms is crucial for their output, and it is the responsibility of humans to ensure the quality of this data. To reduce algorithmic bias, it is important to promote diversity in AI development by encouraging more women to enter STEM roles, especially as AI engineers. Ethical considerations, including compliance, security, and governance, must also be prioritized when developing these technologies. For instance, Omega has implemented a Generative AI Console alongside security and compliance guidelines. Regular audits on compliance and ethics are essential to maintain accountability and prevent biases in AI systems.
Generative AI has the potential to enhance patient experiences significantly. Can you discuss some innovative ways in which this technology is being used to personalize patient care and improve outcomes?
AI algorithms play a crucial role in medical equipment, such as mammograms, by aiding in accurate diagnosis and treatment. However, challenges with accuracy remain. Generative AI, an advanced form of AI, helps to overcome the limitations with AI and is now enhancing AI algorithms by improving their precision with more pretrained LLM (large language models). In healthcare, where the accuracy of test results is vital, even small errors like false positives can result in unnecessary treatments. Generative AI helps ensure more accurate, reliable test results, reducing both false positives and false negatives. This level of precision is particularly beneficial in healthcare, leading to better patient outcomes and more personalized care during hospital visits.
Given the rapid pace of technological advancements, how can healthcare organizations future-proof their AI and analytics investments? What key considerations should leaders keep in mind to ensure long-term sustainability and adaptability?
Healthcare services should embrace tech-enabled solutions, with AI advancements leading the shift towards a data-driven approach. Preventive medicine, a primary focus of the sector, relies on historical data analysis for disease prevention. Data and analytics are fundamental pillars, applied intelligently across both provider and payer spaces.
For example, oncology research leverages patient data to generate insights for pharmaceutical development. As the industry moves forward, future investments will focus heavily on AI, data, and analytics, making these technologies essential for long-term sustainability and adaptability.
Navigating regulatory landscapes is crucial for the deployment of new technologies. How do you approach regulatory challenges associated with implementing generative AI and predictive analytics in healthcare?
The healthcare industry must comply with regulatory guidelines, ensuring that solutions are built on secure, cloud-based infrastructure, which automatically handles security and compliance. A robust governance and management program is essential, with technology providers managing these aspects by default. At Omega, a dedicated security and compliance team, led by the CISO, conducts both internal and external audits. As regulations evolve, audit requirements must be recertified and updated, highlighting the need for ongoing governance and a clear plan to meet compliance standards.
Message to Readers
Generative AI technology, despite its hype, raises questions about its potential to transform the way we work. However, I would like to quote, the famous scientist, Roy Amara, who formulated Amara's Law, which states, “we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run”. As a technology leader, I love this statement. I would like to reiterate this to the leaders. This law can be applied to any emerging technology when it gets introduced to the industry and evolve over a period. The internet era, the cloud and mobility era and the Robotics process automation / BOTs – all these technologies were seen like hyped technologies but eventually resulted as disruptive technologies. It happens with every technology evolution, it may look overhyped in the short term,but it shouldn't be underestimated in the long term.
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