Data to defeat the Disease

As they say, ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’, the success of the budget is in its implementation. A budget is a financial plan for a defined period, mostly one year. This year, while announcing the Union Budget 2020, the Finance Minister used some technical jargon which led many people to conclude that they were hearing some aimless blabber. After two months, we realize that their conclusion was indeed correct. So, what was announced and why was the conclusion correct?

The Finance Minister said that they were working to use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to improve disease detection and pre-emption. This was a part of the PM Jan Arogya Yojana and was announced to be a preventive regime. Out of the Rs. 69000 cr allocated to healthcare, Rs. 6400 cr is earmarked for the PM Jan Arogya Yojana (Ayushman Bharat). The USP of this program is the preventive structure than the diagnostic one. A preventive model aims to prevent the disease before its occurrence. There was another announcement saying that more hospitals will be empaneled in tier 2 and tier 3 for poor people to benefit, under the PMJAY. The idea was to have more hospitals with state-of-the-art facilities to bring a next level healthcare regimen.

If all of this was implemented as said or at least if efforts were taken in that direction, we would have been armored with some health defense. In the case the implementation was at least half way done, the COVID-19 would look like a ‘harmless sneeze’ in front of our Indian hospital’s preventive and diagnosis facilities. The viral outbreak would have been a great opportunity for the healthcare sector to scale up its capacity and we would have become the global healthcare advisory with such cutting edge technology in place (Assuming AI and ML were implemented).

Of course, the number of hospitals has increased many-fold, but this too was not a preventive but diagnostic. The hospital's count increased after the virus took its toll on human life. If healthcare was supposed to be preventive, then we should have predicted the virus and should have brought in appropriate measures. The predictive analysis is not all that tough as it is assumed. There is one simple way out. Search query analysis.

A ‘search query analysis’ is a simple data analysis tool. When people get the initial symptoms of a flu, they will start cross checking their symptoms with any flu and look for medication suggestions. When many start doing this, the search query spikes for a particular result and this information can be passed to the Disease Control Division who can intimate the government to provide the requisite beds and treatment space and arrange for medicines. Though these measures are not completely preventive, they are far better than waiting for a flu to take a big shape like a snowball rolling down a mountain to gather volume.

Any threat comes with an opportunity with it. If our healthcare ideas were implemented and if the results were positive, then, we would have shared the history along with this great epidemic, which is sure to be popular for another hundred years. While the epidemic would be known for the havoc it wreaked, we would be known for healthcare we engineered to stop it.