Making in India with Industry 5.0 to strengthen 'care' in healthcare

With Covid-19 and the evolution of how we live, transact, and interact, companies’ digital ambitions have only grown. Advanced technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), data science and blockchain have permeated the current narrative around digitalization and its value adding capabilities. This was Industry 4.0.

Even as these changes take effect, there is a new, more recent idea that is emerging across the world that promises to take the benefits of Industry 4.0 and bring a more evolved paradigm for how humans and machines work together in the future. This is what is now coming to be known as Industry 5.0.

In the healthcare sector, precision healthcare and AI integrated medical devices and intelligence-based infrastructure, are helping enhance human accuracy and delivering a personalized treatment therapy that is highly effective for patients. Virtual care, remote patient monitoring, AI integrated medical devices are only the beginning of the Industry 5.0 journey in the healthcare sector.

Bringing ‘human’ to technology
Essentially, the idea of Industry 5.0 builds upon what we already know and believe to be the future of business and the world at large, driven largely by advanced technology tools. Embracing this transformation as we encourage the Make in India initiative in the healthcare sector, can be a key stepping-stone to India being a healthcare innovation hub.

While we are reaping the benefits of current and emerging technology such as AI and machine learning to make our processes more efficient, our urban and rural infrastructure more user-centric, or make our energy use more sustainable, this needs to be balanced by the human touch. In other words, the precision and dependability that technology brings, can be better leveraged and complemented through the creative and judgement skills that humans inherently have.

Personalized healthcare solutions developed under Industry 5.0 are expected to improve patient insights and monitoring, as well as provide a lifeline to critically ill patients. In the exciting new world that Industry 5.0 aims to usher in, we could see machine and human collaboration in new ways to bring in mass customization in the delivery of healthcare services.

It would also simultaneously generate employment of a skilled workforce as more health workers would be able to focus on diagnosis and treatment, with technology to rely on for detection. This gives the industry the best of both worlds, where the precision and efficiency benefits of technology will combine with the cognitive abilities that humans are endowed with, such as creative skills and critical thinking.

Putting Industry 5.0 to use
Translated in a more practical context, we could see production lines becoming smarter, more efficient, and more relevant with human intervention to achieve product and service customization on a whole new level.

Applications of Industry 5.0 could grow as the understanding of its scope and capabilities increases. For instance, we could see 3D imaging systems mounted on an automated guided vehicle to take patient images during minimally invasive surgical interventions, where time is crucial. Such a technology is a perfect balance between human and machine labor, that is helping save lives with intelligent imaging technology made in India.

AI has also quickly carved out a niche in the data-rich domain, across various healthcare services, be it rapidly analyzing patient-centric data, or monitoring abnormalities across vital signs, as well as providing accurate information on early diagnosis of various diseases.

For instance, radiologists may not have time to analyze X-rays during a life-saving treatment. AI-enhanced X-ray technology can instead analyze images and accurately identify abnormalities in mere seconds, allowing radiologists to outsource time-consuming labor to AI-powered algorithms, and focus on quick treatment. Such an alliance of human and AI strengths can help save patients’ lives in time-bound situations.

Bigger picture
As an emerging and transformative idea, Industry 5.0 presents a big opportunity to expand the contours of the Make in India program. This concept also paves the way for greater focus on advanced research and development (R&D) in India, which could help elevate India’s position among precision-based technology manufacturing hubs across the world.

Right now, Industry 5.0 needs many enablers to take root and bring about tangible improvements in businesses, in society and the world at large. For this, deeply entrenched cultural attitudes of seeing machines and automation as competitors to human resources must give way to a collaborative mindset that this necessarily requires. To truly harness the potential of digital automation, we must recognize that the time has come for a symbiotic coexistence of man and machine, to address the nation’s healthcare needs in the coming future.

-- Girish Raghavan, VP, Digital Engineering and Technology, GE Healthcare.