Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi has tied up with RxDataScience Inc., a leading healthcare manufacturer in the US, to create a portal documentation of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Research in the Pharmaceutical Sector.

Further, IIT Mandi team is also planning to work closely with RxDataScience Inc, to apply deep-learning methods and cognitive algorithms for discovering patterns among patient journeys and social ties among physicians. This is part of a long-term collaboration focused on performing machine-learning on healthcare datasets concerning patients and physicians and developing novel web-based visualizations.

Explaining the importance of this collaboration, Prof. Varun Dutt, Assistant Professor, School of Computing and Electrical Engineering, IIT Mandi, said, “Data Sciences in India are at a very nascent stage yet but in the U.S, most healthcare and pharmaceutical companies have moved onto the consulting stage wherein live cases are debated online by the doctors and medical practitioners’ community.”

India is at the helm of a healthcare boom given that the Government of India has hiked in health spending by 11 per cent with a gross budgetary allocation of Rs. 1,200 crores for opening more hospitals. Further, Prof Varun Dutt said, “State-of-the-art infrastructure on ground can help only when off ground data science evolves and put the registers and medical charts online up for discussion with other doctors. IIT Mandi is pleased to work with such a nodal agency in the healthcare sector the world over and this puts India on the world map of healthcare mapping online.”

Expressing happiness at this collaboration, Mr. Larry Pickett, Chief Executive Officer, RxDataScience Inc., said, “The RxDataScience and IIT Mandi research collaboration has been extremely productive in generating innovative new algorithms and visualization tools using the latest AI and machine learning approaches applied to longitudinal patient data. Both patients and our biopharma clients benefit from insights generated using novel approaches with cognitive and decision sciences applied to patient finding, patient journey and other complex use cases. We are excited to continue our long-term partnership with Dr. Varun Dutt and the PhD and undergraduate students at IIT Mandi.”

In a country such as India, data sciences can really revolutionize the way rural healthcare works further reducing the cost incurred by other primitive methods of healthcare used in rural areas. Integrating the medical service provider with wearable technology is one way to do this. Wearables can monitor a person’s habits and provide ongoing assessment of their lifestyle and activity levels. Internationally, many insurers are offering services based on the use of these devices.