Sapio Smart Healthcare, a division of government advisory firm Sapio Analytics, has conceptualised a smart healthcare ecosystem and has created an artificially intelligent empathetic bot to empower the initial medical consultation, as part of the same.

Sapio Smart Healthcare aims to reach smaller towns and villages of India in an attempt to create a comprehensively accessible healthcare ecosystem. While launching the new bot named AKS, after the late Dr Ashok Kumar Srivastava, Hardik Somani, Director, Sapio Analytics says, “We are working on transforming villages of India through our newly initiated rural development project with the Government of Delhi, and through various other programmes with bodies of the Government of India. Healthcare is critical to such transformation, and Sapio’s smart healthcare ecosystem is a step towards the same. Today we launch one of our bots that can understand the local and personal issues of an individual while interacting with them and suggesting them the next steps in healthcare, thus displaying empathy besides demonstrating deep medical knowledge. Our analysis shows that empathetic understanding of individuals is important for successful health care in rural areas of India.”

Dr Ashok Kumar Srivastava was a surgeon in the tribal areas of Sahibganj and Pakur in Jharkhand, has dedicated his life towards the advancement of the communities, demonstrating new dimensions of empathetic healthcare. Awarded by numerous government bodies, his excellence in teaching empathetic and personalised healthcare to the medical profession is the reason why he has been chosen as the mascot for this bot. A large-scale evaluation of his mindset, behaviour and persona has been created, to create an artificially intelligent bot based on his thinking, immortalising him in the process.

The bot will be launched as part of a healthcare ecosystem, that also conceptualises a network of interconnected hospitals and healthcare centres through both physical and virtual technologies.

“While working with remote areas in Maharashtra, our partners realised that building a world-class hospital was not enough, because, despite the creation of a smart hospital in the area, the patients were not visiting the same. That’s when we understood that smartness does not just lie in modern technologies but also in understanding the citizens that they are meant to serve, and give importance to their local customs and beliefs and interact with them like their own. This was made possible using AI and domain knowledge from legends,” adds Somani.

Sapio Analytics works extensively with the Government of India in data-driven policymaking and was recently in news for creating a first-of-its-kind smart digital census. With offices in Mumbai, Palo Alto and London, the company is positioning itself as the artificially intelligent government support system for developing countries. Apart from its healthcare division, the company has divisions dedicated to law enforcement, local administration, intelligence, heritage and culture, and economic growth platforms.