The Ubiquitous Penetration Of Medtech In Daily Life

In an interaction with Industry Outlook, Rohit Madhok, Vice President – Engineering, GlobalLogic shares his views on the technology disruption in healthcare, evolution of design-led product engineering and more.

The Indian MedTech innovation ecosystem is fast evolving and vibrant with academic research, venture capital firms, government funding, and promising startups developing products specifically for the Indian market. How is MedTech playing an important role in the current situation?

MedTech is viewed as a highly regulated industry that is not only witnessing a rapid growth but is also creating a positive impact on the human lives. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the pace of innovation and is acting as a catalyst for bringing a positive change.

The Healthcare industry has never felt this dire need for using technology before. Today, technology is being used not only to detect Hotspots of infected areas, but also to start building a complete ecosystem for spreading awareness, proactively predicting troubled spots, monitoring and putting in place preventive measures to significantly curtail spread of the disease.

From developing mobile apps with proximity-based tracking, measuring elevated body temperatures, to thermal body scanning, MedTech has now impregnated in a ubiquitous way in daily lives of people. The higher end innovation of body implants, which can transmit real time vital stats of patients or inject the right level of drug for patients is becoming more pervasive.

Which technologies do you think have massive potential for the Healthcare Industry but are yet to be implemented in the industry?

MedTech by nature of its criticality in impacting human lives, has to be fully compliant by very stringent regulatory requirements. The power of AI/ML is built on the "quality" & "quantity" of data which strengthens the predictability of the final desired outcome. As more non-pervasive tasks get amalgamated into the tech solutions for the Healthcare industry, AI/ML can be significantly leveraged to automate repetitive duties at the lower end of the spectrum (Patient CRM, Drug Supply Chain Management etc.) and higher end of the spectrum (machine readable MRI scans) which can significantly prevent human diagnostic errors.

Another area is remote healthcare monitoring & management. Currently, it is at a mid-stage of adoption and is getting a significant boost, especially during the ongoing pandemic as a remote and safe patient care mechanism.

Please elaborate on the role of design-led product engineering in the tech ecosystem as a practice and how important is the design-led product engineering for the digital transformation of businesses, today?

In an increasingly digital world, our organization is a strong advocate of building unique end customer experiences.

In innumerable ways, we have set the standard on how design-led engineering plays a vital role in any complex digital transformation programs. To drive our transformation journey, we channelize our focus and energy on enhancing the end consumer or business experience by developing easy and intuitive solutions, while deploying complex engineering concepts.

Talking about design, our firm belief is to develop a 360-degree view from a user’s lens which is a fundamental aspect throughout the entire journey for any Digital Transformation program. It is all about creating new opportunities to build innovative business models, revenue flows and changing how businesses are conducted. Design allows you to visualize and comprehend the end consumer’s need. At GlobalLogic, by using design-thinking, we help our customers build the best user experiences and technology. From considering a business’ brand and relationship with its customers to defining coherent & intuitive services, we help create engaging user experiences that are as strong as the technology behind them.

Digitalization is a strategic priority for most businesses today. According to IDC, digitally transformed companies will account for more than 50 percent of global GDP by 2023. Organizations are looking for the next tech innovations that will let them create more customized experiences and succeed. Please explain the role of DARQ in the next phase of growth for technology businesses worldwide.

We consider DARQ as Horizon 3 technology which will advance the next generation evolution. In today’s time, Artificial Intelligence has attained a position where our clients across industries are now defining how this is actively used for Digital Transformation in EdTech, Telecom with Machine Learning based synthetic data, training of Automobiles to be self-servicing via voice enabled chat bots are something which we have already rolled out for key clients.

Quantum computing will accelerate this digital journey and bring in exponential changes in the way digital technologies are changing the world. With significant enhanced computing prowess, this will ensure Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Extended Reality (XR) and other solutions to push the boundaries and create enhanced experiences and solutions for the world. We are also in early days of building more POV and move towards early stage MVP’s using Quantum Computing.

Please elaborate on the various technologies that are creating the next wave of disruption in the Telecom, Retail, and Manufacturing industries.

We believe that constraints can foster innovation in many ways. In today’s time, some sectors / industries which were relentlessly impacted are evolving and are discovering new avenues to support business continuity. To talk about few sectors, Retail will jump even more significantly into ecommerce, Healthcare, Telemedicine, Remote patient monitoring will become the new norm. In Telecom, 5G towers will get a boost to meet the growing demands of businesses, whereas Manufacturing will use smaller models of 3D printing with the use of software to enable their products.

Technology will continue to play a major role in stabilizing the situation and bring advancement in human lives. In the post Covid-19 phase, technology will be at the heart of new products, services, and experiences.

How is the Indian IT industry leveraging technology expertise to combat ongoing virus outbreak and the overall economic challenges?

From using AI and Predictive algorithm to identifying potential hot spots, to providing e-commerce related services at the very doorstep with a click of a button that too for a population of the size of India, I believe the Indian IT industry has done a terrific job so far.

Keeping the current situation in mind, it is worth noting how AI and technology start-ups in the country are leveraging their tools and solutions to help in combating the ongoing crisis. Moreover, Indian start-ups have deployed robots at entrances to office buildings and other public places to dispense hand sanitizer and deliver public health messages about the virus, providing Covid-19 tests at home and online consultation with doctors through different platforms and developing low-cost, easy-to-use, and portable ventilators that can be deployed even in rural areas of India.