Healthcare Artificial Intelligence in India and Ethical Aspects: Fundamental Reflections on Minds and Machines

Goal 3 in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) talks about Good Health and Well-being for all by 2030. Several nations globally, including India, lack trained healthcare professionals to take good care of the population. Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) can help provide healthcare services to the predominantly underserved population. Using innovative AI tools helps enhance healthcare professionals’ productivity by relieving them of mundane, repetitive, administrative-oriented activities. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the various areas where AI is used to help healthcare professionals and, thus, help patients. We provide applications on AI in healthcare across six broad areas, from the early detection of diseases to intervention in treatment, drug discovery, end-of-life care, and managing the healthcare ecosystem, including hospital management, finding doctors, medicine delivery, etc. The paper explores the use of AI in addressing public health and pandemics. For each section, the paper looks at the current situation AI applications globally, followed by those in India. AI applications deal with people’s life, and thus an extra level of caution must be maintained, which brings us to the discussion on ethical aspects of healthcare AI which are discussed for each of the healthcare areas discussed in the paper. The paper concludes with a discussion on the factors in the adoption of AI in India along with suggestions for increasing the adoption in the healthcare sector.