Suchitta Misra, Director of R&D at Stryker Global Technology Centre, India, kickstarted Analytics India Magazine’s The Rising 2021 with her talk on AI in medical technology.

With more than 21 years of experience in software development and research, Misra leads the Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery R&D groups at the India centre. Her groups work in the area of computer vision, 3D computational geometry, 3D visualisation, cloud technologies and application development for robotic and computer-assisted surgery applications in the area of orthopaedics. Her recent work uses analytics and cloud technologies to improve workflow and advance existing robotic technology.

The talk began with a brief introduction of Stryker and its specialities in visualisation solutions, sports medicine, power tools, robotic-arm assisted technology, among others. 

“Healthcare can be said as one of the fastest-growing sectors around the globe. By the year 2025, it is expected that 30 percent of the market share will be coming from healthcare. This could lead to a better predictive diagnosis, patient monitoring and more,” said Misra.

Misra mentioned the trends in medical technology:

  • Medical Robotics
  • Additive manufacturing/ 3D printing
  • Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)
  • Augmented Reality/ Virtual Reality
  • Data/ Product Security
  • Nanotechnology
  • Artificial intelligence

She spoke in detail about a new technique, Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), an amalgamation of Internet of Things (IoT), telemedicine and telehealth technologies.

The other big area is Augmented Reality/ Virtual Reality, which is changing the whole OR space. AR/VR are able to bring new therapies and techniques that combine the virtual and the physical world. It helps the surgeons to be more accurate, take better decisions and ultimately have better outcomes. It also has a big scope in medical education.

AI has the power to create powerful tools to better diagnose and treat various critical diseases. “When it comes to the med-tech world, the potential for AI and ML technologies is enormous and reaches every corner, from diagnostic and imaging technologies to therapeutic applications and robotics. AI can enhance the surgeon’s or practitioner’s capabilities and give him/her “superhuman” perception, dexterity, and information with which to make better decisions during diagnosis, treatment delivery, surgery and post-operative care,” said Misra.

Misra explained how AI is being used in medical technology. Some of the areas of AI application in medical technology are as follows- 

  • Medical Imaging
  • Diagnosis
  • Treatment
  • Patient monitoring
  • Patient data analytics

In the case of medical imaging, AI can provide robust outcomes in image segmentation and 3D reconstruction, computer-aided detection and diagnosis, disease detection from multiple data sources, such as CT, MRI, genomics, pathological tests, etc. In patient monitoring, key areas include wearables and embedded biosensors- remote monitoring and monitoring devices in hospitals- to detect and predict clinical conditions. 

In the case of treatment delivery, the use cases of AI include: 

  1. Preoperative Treatment Planning: This includes automated and patient-specific planning for different surgical/ treatment procedures.
  2. Intraoperative Planning and Guidance: This includes image registration, 3D shape construction, 3D spatial mapping, feature tracking and visual guidance, robotic control, among others.

In patient data analytics, AI can be used for data mining, NLP for document search, prescription, predictive analytics and more. According to Misra, some of the benefits of AI in MedTech are as follows-

  • More insight into actionable data
  • Accuracy of diagnosis and treatment delivery
  • Increased efficiency of clinicians
  • Better clinical outcomes.

“However, there are also some challenges in this field that we are facing while working with AI, which are data availability and data privacy, safety and data quality, algorithm fairness and biases, regulations and compliance and trust,” concluded Misra.

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