"This graph might be prettier than Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa," Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, CIO of Apollo Hospitals, told delegates at HIMSS22 APAC as he admired a slide. 

Yet he was not looking at a piece of art, but data from the case study of a 65-year-old woman who accessed the hospital group’s Pro-Health AI-based preventive health programme service.

After following health recommendations to treat her diabetes and arthritis for one year, her weight had reduced from 79kg to 73kg, and her blood sugar levels also lowered.

A preventive health approach

In his presentation on "Digital Innovation in Managing Patient Health and Patient Communication," Sivaramakrishnan praised the "beauty" of such outcomes and emphasised the importance of preventive care for India’s population of 1.4 billion.

"In India, non-communicable diseases are rising at a pace that’s higher and more dangerous than a Tsunami," he explained. "When you look at that scale and magnitude, preventive health in an automated, replicable manner is absolutely required."

In 2021, more than 100,000 patients were enrolled in Apollo Hospitals’ Pro-Health preventive health programme, which uses augmentation, harmonisation, and insight creation to enable early intervention. Over a year, participants saw an overall 0.7% reduction in HbA1c (glycated haemoglobin) and 64% lost weight.

"This shows the scale of digital enablement in a community that has varied economic levels, varied education levels and varied levels of understanding," said Sivaramakrishnan. "This is evidence-based care practice, enabled through care pathways and protocol transferred electronically to 100,000 patients. This is capacity for healthcare."

The Pro-Health programme uses One Health Record, an AI-enabled personalised health risk assessment built on data collected by Apollo Hospitals over 25 years. This provides health scores on cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and hospitalisation risks due to infection, based on data relevant to local cohorts. 

Patients can access an app, which gives personalised healthy habit-forming nudges through SMS or WhatsApp. The app also features a digital diary, interactive self-reading modules, a dashboard with a parameter summary, and a chatbot which can refer to a dedicated health mentor if needed. 

Ensuring accessibility 

Sivaramakrishnan emphasised the importance of making the platform accessible and personalised to each individual. 

"This is innovation which is able to scale and need not sound like rocket science," he said. 

Often when citizens turn to search engines to research health symptoms, they "end up with cancer as an outcome and panic," said Sivaramakrishnan. 

To combat this, he believes people need "a plain, simple explanation of what a parameter means in language that’s understandable by all of us." One example of this is Apollo's ProHealthDeepX immersive mixed reality experience which allows patients to see inside their hearts. 

"Wellness and preventative health are not episodic events. It’s about a journey," said Sivaramakrishnan. "When all of this comes together, preventive health is genuinely contributing towards a high state of wellbeing."