Of the many ingredients that go into quality healthcare, comprehensive patient data is close to the top of the list. No one knows this more than Mayur Saxena, CEO and founder of Droice Labs. Saxena created his startup while he was pursuing his doctorate degree at Columbia University, and working at healthcare company conducting clinical trials on new medication. Hes energized by the plethora of opportunities to improve healthcare using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

Mayur Saxena, CEO and founder of Droice Labs, is energized by the plethora of opportunities to improve healthcare using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

Patient data is notoriously disorganized and complex, he said. With machine learning, healthcare professionals can organize that information to better understand the disease of every patient and reach them faster with interventions that improve their lives. Its an amazing feeling when you talk with someone whos recovered from an illness because they received the right care.

The idea behind Droice is to make messy data neat, so people can spend less time organizing it and more time analyzing it.

Insights drive personalized patient care

The startup has collected data from 50 million patients in working with healthcare providers, payors, and government organizations in the U.S. and Europe. Healthcare professionals in hospitals, pharmaceutical firms, medical device manufacturing, and insurance rely on Droice Labs natural language understanding (NLU) technology. NLU make sense of patient information in multiple languages from anywhere such as electronic medical records (EMR), insurance claims, research reports, and medical devices.

Our machine learning system takes all the data about an individual into account, and breaks it down so that a doctor, pharmaceutical scientist or healthcare insurer can understand patients better and faster, said Saxena. Instead of repetitive, disparate one-on-one diagnoses and follow-up care, were automating personalized care for a much larger patient population. With shared insights across a large patient population, physicians can chart disease progress and prescribe the best treatment plan. Clinical research into new drugs that took years could be reduced to days or weeks.

Saxena said that one hospital reduced the amount of time it took to arrive at an appropriate diagnosis for patients by over 20 percent.

SAP.iO Foundry opens up world of healthcare opportunities

Droice Labs recently participated in the latest healthcare-focused accelerator program at SAP.iO Foundry New York. It was one of seven up and coming startups working with hospital system providers, employee health and wellness solutions, medical devices, and health IT.

Weve learned so much about customers in the healthcare industry from SAPs sales and product teams, said Saxena. These large organizations have unique needs, and were grateful for the opportunity to partner with SAP, a company with a massive presence across so many geographies. Weve gained valuable insights about strategic global selling and scaling our technology to meet the unique requirements of these customers.

The Droice Labs machine learning platform is now downloadable on the SAP App Center.

Turning long-time passion into thriving startup

Droice Labs reflects Saxenas long-time personal and career commitment to healthcare. After earning his undergraduate degree in bioengineering and biomedical engineering, he worked in high-performance computing in Singapore before arriving in the United States. Thats when he acted on his passion, exploring how AI and machine learning can help improve patient care, and potentially eradicate disease.

Were looking at data from hundreds of thousands of patients a day, helping improve their care pathways across the healthcare system, said Saxena. We have the technology to work with patient data at scale. Im most excited about working together with recognized healthcare experts using state-of-the-art technology to address major challenges in this complicated, regulated industry.

Digitally trustworthy strategy

In an environment where patient concerns and regulations around data control continue to increase, Saxena emphasized his companys strategy of digital trust.

Everything we do is designed to respect individual patient privacy, he said. We dont possess related identifying data on patients, and we remove any identifiers. Working in a mission critical environment like healthcare brings a set of responsibilities. If there is a population suffering from disease, and by looking at their information we can partner with healthcare providers to help make their quality of life better, thats what well do. But we dont participate in business models targeted to specific individuals.

Saxena expected his companys rapid growth trajectory to continue, and it was easy to see why. According to Gartners 2020 CIO Survey, AI is the healthcare industrys top game-changing technology. These analysts predicted 75 percent ofhealthcare delivery organizationswill invest in an AI capability to explicitly improve either operational performance or clinical outcomes by 2021.

Originally posted here:

AI Is Top Game-Changing Technology In Healthcare Industry - Forbes