Siemens’ India engineers use AI & software to reimagine healthcare – ET HealthWorld

Siemens Healthineers is an €18-billion German medical device and health-tech powerhouse which collaborates with 90% of the top hospitals globally and whose technologies heavily influence critical clinical decisions worldwide. They have been in India for almost 90 years, and doing R&D here for close to three decades. They even have a manufacturing plant in Vadodara and Bengaluru that exports medical equipment to dozens of countries.

“This is the only place where you will find every segment of Siemens Healthineers present under one roof, whether it is CT, MR, molecular imaging, advanced therapy, lab diagnostics or digital technologies,” says Dileep Mangsuli, head of the company’s development centre.

In 2018, the company unveiled a multidisciplinary mobile C-arm, a medical imaging device that uses X-rays. The product, designed in India, was such a hit it is now being manufactured here and exported worldwide. In 2019, the company unveiled their first made-in-India CT scanner, another success.

Mangsuli says these products may look like big mechanical, iron products, but in reality, lots of unique software and digital technology go into them. The company uses technologies like DevOps, AI, automation and countless software platforms. They also have to invest in cyber security specialists. “Healthcare is heavily targeted by hackers. We need to make all our products hacker-proof, since most of our technology lies in the cloud.”

This software and new-age digital technology expertise, Mangsuli says, makes the India R&D ops extremely valuable to the company. The Bengaluru team today forms nearly 54% of the global software/digital technology teams for Siemens Healthineers. And the company is betting big that the next revolution in the medical field will come from digital technologies.

We have digital twins of the heart which help us in the accurate placement of electrodes on a patient’s heart for cardiac resynchronisation therapy. These are done today, they are practical.Dileep Mangsuli, Head, Development Centre, Siemens Healthineers

Healthcare is being reimagined with the help of three competencies – patient twinning, precision therapy, and embracing digital, data, and AI. Patient twinning – a digital copy of the patient – enables personalisation of diagnosis, therapy selection and monitoring, after care and managing health. Precision therapy includes intelligent and image-guided treatment for the most threatening diseases – like using radiation therapy at the exact site of a brain tumour so that healthy cells don’t get harmed.

Mangsuli says AI in particular will be the lever to move us from image analytics to disease pathways to digital twins, which will help us navigate from disease management to wellness management.

“It’s going to take some time. But we have created the digital twins of organs. We have digital twins of the heart which help us in the accurate placement of electrodes on a patient’s heart for cardiac resynchronisation therapy. These are done today, they are practical,” he says.

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