Experts: Healthcare needs docs who bridge medicine-tech gap

Bengaluru: As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly embedded in healthcare, experts are calling for a new generation of doctors who can bridge the worlds of medicine, technology and research. They caution that trust among doctors and patients will determine the success of AI adoption.

Speaking at the 15th edition of the Lifesciences & Healthcare Innovation Forum (LHIF), organised by the Nasscom Centre of Excellence (CoE) for IoT & AI Wednesday, healthcare leaders said AI is already transforming areas ranging from diagnosis and clinical documentation to drug discovery. However, they stressed that technology should support doctors rather than replace them.

Highlighting the need for clinician-scientists, Dr Uma Nambiar, IISc Medical School Foundation CEO, said there are significant gaps in the healthcare innovation ecosystem that require professionals who understand both medicine and technology.

According to her, the upcoming hospital and medical school at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) aims to address this challenge by training physician-scientists and clinician-scientists through interdisciplinary programmes.

“Doctors must be able to communicate healthcare challenges effectively to engineers and researchers. They need to speak the language of science and innovation. Clinician-scientists can bridge the gap between laboratory innovation and patient care,” she said.

Dr Nambiar also argued that engineers and technology developers should be viewed as part of the healthcare ecosystem because their work directly affects patient outcomes. “If a medical device fails, if an imaging system produces inaccurate results, or if an AI algorithm makes a mistake, patient outcomes are affected. Responsibility extends beyond doctors and hospitals to everyone involved in creating healthcare solutions,” she said.

Dr Sujoy Kar, chief medical information officer and vice-president at Apollo Hospitals, said healthcare organisations must focus on building trust at every stage of AI implementation. “In healthcare AI, we must build a trust pipeline that extends from algorithms to physicians and from physicians to patients. If that trust pipeline is weak at any point, the solution will not succeed,” he said.

Dr Kar added that resistance from doctors should not be viewed negatively. “It helps refine the way solutions are designed and implemented. Diverse perspectives and scepticism often improve the outcome,” he said.

Experts also emphasised that AI should function as a decision-support tool rather than replace human judgment.

“The objective is not to replace doctors but to provide tools that support better clinical decision-making,” said Vikram Pagaria, director, National Health Authority (NHA).

Pagaria also revealed that incentives worth approximately Rs 157 crore have been disbursed to healthcare facilities and health-tech companies under the govt’s Digital Health Incentive Scheme to promote digitisation.

Sanjeev Malhotra, CEO of Nasscom CoE, said public trust in AI-powered healthcare solutions would depend largely on their accuracy and endorsements by trusted institutions. “Trust ultimately comes from accuracy. If a system consistently delivers reliable results, people will continue to use it. Over time, trust is built when users repeatedly see accurate outcomes,” he said.

Stakeholders at the forum also stressed the need for home-grown AI solutions built on India-specific datasets, while noting that several Indian startups are already developing products that can compete with global standards.