Technology development in healthcare is progressing at a rapid pace. Wearables and apps go hand in hand and are common nowadays in semi-urban and urban set-ups. On a different but related note, patient centric hospital management systems augmented with Internet of Things’ (IoT) deployments and supporting apps have become an integral part of our lives. Along these lines, the current issue of DRISHTIKON commences with an illustration of the impetus provided by the Government of India to the Digital India Campaign, National Health Policy, National Digital Health Blueprint, National Digital Health Mission and other initiatives towards digital healthcare.
Such technological advances and adaptations are certainly breaking barriers. Despite these milestones, the concept of a unified framework with personalized decision support for a continuum of care is still some distance away in the country. It is crucial to leverage these advancements to improve access to healthcare and enhance the overall healthcare experience for individuals. Applications on smartphones today record and provide patterns on the habits and wellness efforts of individuals. These are useful and helpful but to have a significant impact on individual well-being, such apps must be synergized with patient habits, medical history, and treatment. A technology driven, clinically correlated, analytics’ enabled pathy-agnostic framework leading to a digital twin (DT) of an individual is the hallmark of a smart integrated healthcare solution for future generations.
IITI DRISHTI CPS Foundation (hereafter DRISHTI CPS) has made remarkable progress in this direction through the development of a smart healthcare system called – Charak Digital Twin (CharakDT). The current issue of DRISHTIKON highlights the benefits, salient features, and integrated technologies of CharakDT. The technologies integrated with the CharakDT include solutions for blood sugar estimation and management, 3D brain model creation, digital prescription with alerts, automated glaucoma screening, contactless heat rate estimation, to name just a few. Through extensive literature review, interactions with healthcare professionals at Prathmik Swasthya Kendra, polyclinics, hospitals, the DRISHTI CPS team was able to gather pertinent pointers for DT enabled healthcare solutions. A glimpse of the same is presented in this issue. Adopting the ‘last mile first’ approach, we are proud that DRISHTI CPS has demonstrated its initial variant of a human digital health mirror (DHM) at a Prathmik Swasthya Kendra.
An invaluable contribution by Mr. Hemant Punekar, a computational fluid dynamics expert with ANSYS, underlines the importance of three key dimensions – personalized medicine, complete digital prototypes, and in-silico clinical trials, for a pragmatic DT. An interview with Prof. (Dr.) M.C. Misra, former Director AIIMS, New Delhi, highlights the enormous potential of digital healthcare, and artificial intelligence-based tools to assist healthcare professionals in diagnosis and personalized treatment.
While showcasing the efforts of DRISHTI CPS in healthcare centric technology development, this issue of DRISHTIKON lays the foundation of a smart and personalized DT that will interest healthcare professionals, technology developers, and policy makers. Wish you a wonderful read!