Zydus Hospitals, Ahmedabad, and India Medtronic, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ireland-headquartered Medtronic plc, have announced their partnership to support stroke patients in Gujarat via a hub and spoke network.

As part of the partnership, Medtronic will collaborate with Zydus Hospitals to build an ecosystem that can help in timely diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients by facilitating the use of indigenous artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled technology and providing tools and technologies to support the education and training of doctors in select remote hospitals.

In India, nearly 1.8 million patients are affected by stroke each year. In the bigger cities with improved healthcare infrastructure, patients stand a better chance of proper diagnosis, followed by the requisite treatment. However, in the peripheral & rural settings, the challenges are aplenty.

The partnership will serve the people of peripheral Gujarat by helping them deal with stroke as a disease effectively. The hub and spoke system works on an advanced AI capable of interpreting a CT scan for a stroke.

A team of stroke experts at Zydus hospital (hub) would visualise the CT scan performed at the remote hospital (spoke) and handhold the local physician on further patient management. This way, the physician at the remote hospital is empowered to decide on the future course of action basis the patient's needs and the patient receives the right treatment at the right time.