The Apollo Hospitals on September 16 introduced their latest service, an artificial intelligence (AI) enabled preventive healthcare programme.

Titled ProHealth, the new service will introduce personalised medicine and preventive healthcare solutions to patients with specific focus on non-communicable diseases (NCDs). At the launch event in Chennai, Apollo Hospitals Groups Chairman, Prathap C Reddy, spoke about the rise in non-communicable diseases and the need to offer healthcare services addressing this growing problem. 

"Six years ago, the World Bank had said that 80 percent of death in the next decade would be due to non-communicable diseases and this would create a cost burden of 30 trillion dollars. In India the rise in NCDs would lead to a cost burden of 4.8 trillion dollars or 50 percent of the GDP," Dr Reddy stated.

Noting that diseases such as diabetes, obesity, stroke, cardiac ailments and cancer are on the rise, the Apollo Group's founder added that ProHeath is designed to predict, prevent and overcome these issues. It would also move the future of healthcare from treatment to management, keeping NCDs and lifestyle diseases at bay. 

The 3-year programme by Apollo launched in Chennai and Hyderabad makes use of an AI powered personalised health risk assessment (pHRA) technology combined with human elements to treat patients. 

Prathap Reddy added that the AI would help offer predictive healthcare solutions, which is the future of personalised healthcare. A healthcare mentor would  be assigned and appropriate clinical and lifestyle interventions would be offered to each patient for healthier living. The ProHealth package is priced at Rs 6000 for the first year, and Rs 5000 and 4000 for the next two years respectively. 

Apollo pioneered the master health checkup as part of preventive healthcare solutions nearly 4 decades ago. Prathap Reddy added that ProHealth was conceptualised by Apollo's experts and innovators on the basis of the 20 million health check-ups conducted by Apollo Hospitals. 

While the rolling out of the new launched package is still in the works, Shobhana Kamineni, Executive Vice Chairperson of Apollo Hospitals said that strategic tie-ups with corporates was in the pipeline. 

"We are still discussing how the programme can be rolled out to touch the lives of patients. For now it is available in Chennai and Hyderabad and this is just the launch," she said. 

Government should spend 3% of GDP on heath care 

Prathap Reddy also spoke about the need for the GOI to spend more on the health care sector. Adding that spending 1.25 percent of GDP on healthcare was not enough, Dr Reddy added that the government should spend 3 percent of its GDP on healthcare to increase public expenditure from 5-7 percent and take the overall healthcare spending to 10 percent of the GDP. 

However, he also lauded the government's announcement to open health and wellness centres across India for the underprivileged.

Speaking about the private healthcare space, Dr Reddy said that the government should consider private hospitals as 'co-players' as they provide services to 2/3rd of the country's population.

This story was originally published on The News Minute and is reprinted here with permission. It can be viewed on https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/apollo-launches-prohealth-ai-powered-personalized-healthcare-programme-109087