Mint Primer: Dr AI is here, but will the human touch go away?
Shanghai-based company Synyi AI recently unveiled a fully artificial intelligence (AI)-run clinic in Saudi Arabia. While AI excels at diagnosis, it lacks human empathy and nuanced judgement. Is the future of healthcare hybrid or autonomous? And can we trust AI docs?
Just how do these AI clinics function?
Synyi AI works with hospitals in China, using AI for diagnosis and medical research. Its new clinic, built with Saudi Arabia's Almoosa Health Group as a pilot, is led by an AI 'doctor". Christened Dr Hua, it independently conducts consultations, diagnoses, and suggests treatments via a tablet. A human doctor then reviews and approves each plan. This marks a shift from AI as a support tool to primary care providers. The AI doctor covers about 30 respiratory illnesses, including asthma and pharyngitis. Synyi plans to expand its scope to 50 conditions including gastrointestinal and dermatological problems.
Read more: Mint Primer: A robot for every 3 humans: What happens to us?
From assistant to doc seems like a jump...
Not really. AI systems already assist with checking symptoms, asking routine questions, and prioritizing patients before doctors take over. They can interpret scans and flag critical results. Hospitals in South Korea, China, India and the UAE use AI to manage logistics, bed-use and infection control. In May 2024, Tsinghua University went a step further when it introduced a virtual 'Agent Hospital" with large language model (LLM)-powered doctors. Months later, Bauhinia Zhikang launched 42 AI doctors across 21 departments for internal testing of their diagnostics. With Synyi AI, fully autonomous clinics may become commonplace.
What can AI doctors do that humans can't?
AI tools from Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Nvidia can analyze X-rays, medical records and large datasets with precision and speed. They also generate treatment summaries. Unlike humans, AI doctors don't get tired. They can handle up to 10,000 patients a week, compared with around 100 by a typical human doctor—valuable in overburdened health systems.
Can AI replace human doctors entirely?
AI excels at repetitive, data-heavy tasks like diagnosing common illnesses, analyzing scans and flagging abnormalities. Surgical robots like Da Vinci are used in hospitals worldwide, including Apollo, AIIMS and Fortis in India. But AI lacks empathy, moral reasoning, and adaptability in complex or unclear cases. Even at Synyi's AI-run clinic, a human doctor must approve each decision. Over-promising, too, can be risky. Babylon Health collapsed after its claims of diagnosing better than doctors fell short.
Read more: AI application startups in India set to get more investments from VC firms Accel, Peak XV, Lightspeed
Can AI in healthcare be trusted?
There is a need for supervision given growing use in Asia—from surgical robots in South Korea, China, Japan and India to home-care AI research in Singapore. But regulation is catching up: Europe's AI Act, the US FDA and the World Health Organisation (WHO) all emphasize transparency, safety, and ethics, especially as LLMs can hallucinate (provide false answers confidently) and show bias. India's medical ethics code requires doctors to disclose AI use to patients. Keeping human doctors in the loop remains key for trust.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
Builder.ai faked business with Indian firm VerSe to inflate sales
, the artificial intelligence startup that recently announced plans to declare bankruptcy, faked business with the Indian social-media startup VerSe Innovation for years to falsely inflate its sales, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg and people with direct knowledge of the practice. The two companies routinely billed one another for roughly the same amounts between 2021 and 2024, documents reviewed by Bloomberg show, as part of an alleged practice known as "round-tripping" that the people said used to inflate revenue figures it presented to investors. In many cases, products and services weren't actually provided to either company for these payments, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information. Umang Bedi , a VerSe co-founder, said it was 'absolutely baseless and false' that his company would have recorded expenses or billed services that it didn't receive or provide. 'We're not the kind of company that is in the business of inflating revenues,' he said in an interview. A representative for declined to comment. once valued at about $1.5 billion, is the most high-profile AI startup to collapse since ChatGPT's launch started a global investment frenzy. Its downfall shows the risks inherent in the rush to back AI startups as investors seek to replicate the success of industry heavyweights such as OpenAI and Anthropic. The London-based startup, which pitched its tech as a way to make apps with little or no coding, said earlier in May it planned to file for bankruptcy after a major creditor seized most of its reported earlier that overstated its projected 2024 sales to creditors by 300%, which contributed to the lenders' decision to seize the company's funds. Bloomberg also reported that US prosecutors have demanded that the company hand over financial statements, accounting policies and a list of its customers as part of a subpoena. has declined to comment on the subpoena. The company has acknowledged it's found discrepancies in its historical sales but has declined to comment on the scope of the alleged overstatement. collected close to $60 million in revenue from VerSe in the four-year period for services such as application development, according to people with knowledge of the situation. In turn, the AI startup sent funds to VerSe and its subsidiary, Quark Media Tech, for services such as marketing, the documents show. The two companies appear to have interspersed the timing and amount of the invoices to avoid suspicion, though each firm ultimately spent approximately the same amount, according to the people and documents. Bedi, a former managing director for Facebook in India and South Asia, said VerSe started working with around 2021, but denied that the companies were acting in cooperation or failed to deliver any services. 'There is no correlation on any timing of any payment to any partner,' Bedi said. had raised more than $450 million from investors, including Insight Partners and the Qatar Investment Authority , or QIA, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds. Microsoft Corp. invested in 2023 and announced plans to integrate the startup's offerings with Microsoft's cloud and Teams product. 'We see creating an entirely new category that empowers everyone to be a developer,' Jon Tinter, a Microsoft corporate vice president, said at the time. A representative for Insight Partners didn't respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople for Microsoft and QIA, which also invested in VerSe, declined to comment. In February, founder Sachin Dev Duggal stepped down as chief executive officer, although he remained on the board and retained his title as 'Chief Wizard' at the nine-year-old company. He was replaced as CEO by Manpreet Ratia, an investor with Jungle Ventures, a backer based in Singapore. Shortly after joining, Ratia said he planned to strengthen the company's governance and policies. Three months after taking the role, he told employees the company planned to shut down. 'With no viable alternatives, the Board has made the extremely difficult decision to enter into insolvency,' he wrote in an internal email reviewed by Bloomberg. Duggal did not respond to multiple requests for comment. VerSe, which is based in Bengaluru, is one of the largest consumer tech newcomers in India. VerSe has said that its news aggregation app, Dailyhunt, has more than 350 million monthly users, and it released a video app, called Josh , right after the Indian government banned TikTok. In 2022, VerSe raised $805 million from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and other investors in a round that gave the startup a $5 billion valuation. Goldman Sachs and Google had invested in VerSe earlier. Representatives for the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Goldman declined to comment. Google didn't respond to requests for comment. In VerSe's financial report for the year ending in March 2024, its auditor Deloitte wrote in its opinion that the startup lacked 'appropriate internal controls' over several aspects of its business, including its information technology, advertising revenue and relationship with suppliers. Those flaws 'could potentially result in material misstatement' of the company's accounts, the auditor wrote in the report, which was reviewed by Bloomberg. Bedi pointed out that Deloitte did sign off on the startup's accounts as 'true and fair.' He described the issues the auditor flagged as common 'process control' difficulties that the company was working through. The Deloitte opinion was previously reported by the Indian publication Mint. The newspaper also reported in April that VerSe's chief financial officer had resigned ahead of the startup's expected initial public offering. Bedi said the CFO, Sandip Basu, left for health reasons. He said the company currently has 'very little debt' and plans to break even by the second half of 2025. He said the company is speaking to potential advisers about an IPO, but doesn't have firm plans. Basu couldn't immediately be reached for comment. founder Duggal and Bedi have cooperated publicly and Duggal has posted on social media with Bedi . In 2023, Duggal added a photo on his verified Instagram account showing him and Bedi standing together, sporting light colored blazers, in front of 10 Downing Street, the official residence and office of the British Prime Minister. 'With my main man @ at @10downingstreet for #londontechweek,' Duggal wrote, tagging Bedi's verified account. In a later LinkedIn post, Duggal thanked Bedi for contributing to a gathering in Singapore as one of the 'incredible speakers from the extended family.' Bedi said he participated in the event via Zoom and did not travel to Singapore. He said he invested about $10,000 in Duggal's company, which was previously known as around 2017. But Bedi said he has only met Duggal 'two or three' times, noting that the London meeting was part of a broader group of tech executives and entrepreneurs. 'I don't have a very close interpersonal relationship,' Bedi said. 'I have a professional business working relationship.'
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
Microsoft unit in Russia to file for bankruptcy, database shows
One of Microsoft Corp's subsidiaries in Russia plans to file for bankruptcy, according to a note published on the official Fedresurs registry on Friday. Microsoft did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. President Vladimir Putin said this week that foreign service providers like Microsoft and Zoom should be "throttled" in Russia to make way for domestic software solutions. Microsoft continued providing key services in Russia after Moscow's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but in June 2022 it said it was significantly scaling down its operations due to changes to the economic outlook and the impact on its business there. The U.S. tech giant had already removed Russian state-owned media outlet RT's mobile apps from the Windows App store and banned advertisements on Russian state-sponsored media in the days after the invasion. The note posted on Fedresurs on Friday said that Microsoft Rus LLC was intending to declare bankruptcy. The TASS news agency reported that Microsoft has three other Russian units - Microsoft Development Centre Rus, Microsoft Mobile Rus and Microsoft Payments Rus. It was not immediately clear how those units might be affected. Alphabet-owned Google's Russian subsidiary filed for bankruptcy in 2022, saying that the seizure of its bank account by Russian authorities had made it untenable for its Russian office to function, including paying Russia-based employees, suppliers and vendors.
Indian Express
an hour ago
- Indian Express
As carmakers struggle to integrate software systems into vehicles, Toyota weaves in its Arene toolkit
Toyota, the world's biggest carmaker, unveiled its latest RAV4 compact sport utility vehicle that would be the first model to feature its Arene software development platform. In the new RAV4, the Arene platform has helped with the development of software powering the car's new multimedia system's cockpit voice agent and centre console display, as well as advanced safety technologies. Tokyo-based Toyota sells more cars each year than any other auto major in the world. So, justifiably, it had similar big ambitions when it created its own in-house technology startup in 2021 as it set about trying to build software for its newer cars, especially hybrids and battery electric vehicles. This is in keeping with the reality of new-age cars being more of a software product than being just an over-engineered, hardware product. But like in the case of other legacy carmakers, Toyota struggled somewhat to get started with its project – initially called Woven Planet when it was set up in 2021, and subsequently re-christened Woven by Toyota. The Arene platform is the first big commercial product to come out of this repurposed venture, which, Toyota says, combines the company's 'decades of manufacturing expertise with modern software capabilities'. The Arene Advantages Toyota says Arene gives its suppliers a common platform and standardised processes for better management of complex, multi-stakeholder development projects. With Arene, Toyota and its suppliers are able to 'maximise coordination, ensure cross-stream visibility, and simplify integration and testing'. This new platform would also help the carmaker expand and accelerate software testing. Physical testing is complemented by virtual testing, which allows for software features to be analysed discreetly and on any model or trim for more exhaustive quality assurance. Arene is built on the concept of 'kaizen', or continuous improvement — an integral feature of the Toyota assembly line philosophy. Rather than traditional linear development, the new platform is designed to 'make use of the latest iterative development methodologies' and leverage 'the best value of software breakthroughs'. 'Through abstracted APIs (application programming interface, or the connections between computers or between computer programmes), architected software layers and advanced testing protocols, Arene applications are interchangeable across platforms and reusable across vehicle generations, meaning a bigger return on investment,' a company executive said. 'Woven by Toyota' Toyota, just like pretty much of the legacy auto industry, is faced with the prospect of enormous technological disruptions that could upend production processes and change the nature of their products – from a hardware offering to a supercomputer-on-wheels. Consumers of electric vehicles want immersive entertainment systems and features such as autonomous driving. These are not areas that companies like Toyota have had expertise in in the past, whereas EV makers such as Tesla and China's BYD or Nio are far more invested in the software side of the business. So Toyota's goal with this new startup was to create a separate organisation that was at an arm's-length from the parent group, with its legacy of manufacturing and obsessive bureaucracy. A Google employee was brought in late 2021 as CEO for this project. It was called Woven Planet initially, to acknowledge Toyota's history as a loom maker in the 1920s. This distinct software project was in line with what Volkswagen tried out with its CARIAD software unit. Things, however, started to go wrong over the next 24 months, and Toyota announced significant changes at the venture, and subsequently renamed it 'Woven by Toyota'. The unit was then infused with Toyota executives and a clear signal was sent out that there would be more collaboration between this new venture and Toyota Motor. Arene is therefore a milestone for Toyota's new project. A senior executive from Toyota Kirloskar Motor, the Japanese car major's India venture, said that the Japanese parent company had also launched retraining programmes for workers for the transition and that software engineers make up for a significant chunk of its mid-career hires, led by the company's autonomous driving unit. More software also means more data on consumers and on their driving behaviour, which legacy carmakers have been slow to tap as compared to EV makers.. The Software Transition This transition has been far easier for EV makers, who have progressively taken their software focus to near obsessive levels. The learning from both Tesla and BYD, the two EV market leaders, is that car brands are increasingly being differentiated by the consumer experience of using their inbuilt features, which is now determined much more by their software than the hardware. Amid this transition, software is also proving to be a weak link for legacy automakers. Like Toyota and Volkswagen, Japanese carmaker Honda Motor too plans to double the number of software programmers it employs to around 10,000 by 2030. This would involve deepening its partnership with Pune-based Indian software company KPIT Technologies, alongside building its own software engineering team. Amsterdam-headquartered Stellantis, formed after the merger of the Italian–American conglomerate Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and France's PSA Group, and is now the world's fourth largest automaker, plans to hire over 1,000 software engineers in India by 2025, including for its autonomous vehicle plans. Volkswagen's CARIAD has now tied up with a Chinese software company in a collaborative approach. Most other legacy carmakers are falling back on Google's Android Auto and Apple's CarPlay to dovetail in-car plug-and-play software solutions. This is, however, accompanied by the problem of carmakers having to relinquish control and user data to Apple and Google. Anil Sasi is National Business Editor with the Indian Express and writes on business and finance issues. He has worked with The Hindu Business Line and Business Standard and is an alumnus of Delhi University. ... Read More
