New Delhi [India], February 1 (ANI/SRV): YugasaBot joins the healthcare pilot DIISHA (Digital Innovations Interventions for Sustainable Healthtech Action) for empowering ASHA workers with an AI-enabled chatbot for answering their queries about health policies for their respective village residents. ASHAs, who are the frontline health workers of rural India, struggle with the problem of not having timely access to information about existing and new health policies introduced by respective State governments. With YugasaBot in place, ASHAs would be able to ask their specific questions around such policies right on WhatsApp, 24x7, in the language of their choice.

YugasaBot, a made-in-India platform, is the only virtual assistant currently focused on automating healthcare communication over WhatsApp. The founder of the product, Vivek Mittal, sounded excited while saying, "ASHA workers will be immensely benefited with the use of YugasaBot." "I am glad that we are working on an ambitious project to enable the largest female force in the country in the health industry to provide her services with more efficiency."

DIISHA, the brainchild of Mr. Abhijeet Sinha, Program Director Ease of Doing Business, is Asia's largest pilot on healthcare digitization and is a potential endeavour towards the technical upgradation of ASHAs through a considerable digitization in healthcare. Sinha says, "We aim to focus on two crucial bottlenecks of rural healthcare implementation through conversational AI on WhatsApp." One is the 24x7 support and training of FLHW for all healthcare initiatives through AI bots. Second is discarding the need for a physical visit to any centre (CSC or PHC) to avail of any local or centrally sponsored scheme or eligible Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) claim or authorization.

Abhijeet also added that such conversational AI support would incentivize ASHA and FLHW on the patterns of Recognition, Reward, and Reimbursement to benefit from training, devices, and increased remuneration for conducting more credible visits and providing authentic data for digitization. Digital upgradation aimed through DIISHA is critically inevitable as Indian healthcare is under severe strain to serve people who need medical care and screening services from currently limited resources and at primary healthcare level and addressing massive shortage of skilled healthcare resources.

Healthcare is generally heard to be on the back foot, as compared to other industries, when it comes to adopting new technologies. While there is a convincing reason for this slow adoption, considering the criticality involved and the precision required in healthcare and not replacing the proven techniques with newer technology, there has still been a good amount of successful deployment of high tech in the health domain in the last decade.

Looking at data in Indian healthcare, approximately 2,00,000 online consultations per year happened before COVID, while in 2022, almost 1,70,000 teleconsultations happened in a single day. Such a sudden rise in teleconsultation proves that the adoption of the latest technology is leading to greater connectivity in healthcare. "Technology has helped people access good quality healthcare from the comfort of their homes," says Vijay Raghunathan, Founder of the renowned teleconsultation platform DocGenie. DocGenie now also offers its patients the facility of booking teleconsultations with top doctors through an AI-enabled chatbot, YugasaBot, right on WhatsApp. Through its platform and health chatbot, the brand serves thousands of patients online every month.

India has seen a 73 per cent rise in healthcare expenditure post-COVID, which indicates that the traffic of users and patients in the healthcare domain is increasing at a high rate, and to cater to the communication requirements of these users, the automation of communication in the healthcare industry has become a necessity. AI-enabled chatbots are filling in this gap very effectively and efficiently, says Ashish Mittal, Co-Founder at YugasaBot.

The outbreak of COVID has changed individuals and organisations all over the world forever in the way they act, react, and connect. The pandemic has certainly changed the medical fraternity too, in how they perceive 'Digitization in Healthcare'." Unlike previous endeavours of inventors and corporations staying focused only on inventions and discoveries in pharmaceuticals, gadgets, and instruments, it was the first time that they realised the need for innovation and technology in connecting and communicating with peers and patients.

Clearly, the latest trends in technology, like the use of chatbots, artificial intelligence in self-health analysis, communication automation, high-end instruments for collecting better and more precise diagnostics, and improved medication through newer inventions and discoveries, have taken health practises significantly ahead, and there are still miles to go.

For more information on the use of chatbots in healthcare and the DIISHA project, feel free to contact [email protected].

This story has been provided by SRV. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/SRV)