Artificial intelligence can improve health sector, says Arvind Panagariya

There is a huge scope for India to improve medical treatment by taking advantage of technical developments such as AI and data analytics, former Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya said on Monday.

"With AI (artificial intelligence), data analytics and all the technology there, treatments can perhaps be done better (in India) as we go forward," Panagariya, Professor of Indian Political Economy at the Columbia University, said at US-India Strategic Partnership Forum here.

By taking advantage of the technological changes such as AI and data analytics, India can bring good treatments almost anywhere in the country, he added.

On the pricing issue in the medical industry, he said clearly this is being recognised in the trade agreements as well, citing that in some visible cases, prices have been negotiated between the companies (exporting and importing).

Panagariya said India's health sector is still very much evolving and very informal as it is still largely dominated by the private sector and government's role largely had been into setting up medical colleges.

"The way India started was that largely this was driven by the private sector. Government's role was largely in setting up medical colleges and treatments etc generally, there were some hospitals, but were largely driven by private sector. In the rural areas, the government did set-up the whole infrastructure.

"The biggest problem that India had was that in the rural areas and even in tier 2-3 cities, the qualified doctors are just don't go..and much of the provision is done my people who have just kind of learnt the job or somebody who have worked as an assistant with a doctor," he said.

These are the challenges that India will have to beat, he said, adding the sector will see changes as the reforms have been introduced through The Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Act, 2019.