Monash Uni has signed an MoU with one of the subcontinent’s biggest hospital networks to advance digital health projects.
Monash University’s Faculty of Information Technology has partnered with one of India’s largest hospital networks – Apollo Hospitals – to advance digital health research and solutions in India and Australia.
A memorandum of understanding was signed between the two organisations earlier this year in India. In addition to sharing data and technology, the Faculty of Information Technology has agreed to conduct educational sessions for Apollo’s healthcare professionals, while Faculty of IT students will be able to apply their learnings and engage with Apollo Hospitals in real-life practical settings for their projects.
Professor Chris Bain, digital health lead at the Faculty of IT, welcomed the partnership and said it presents a huge opportunity to advance digital health innovation and research in both countries.
“We are delighted with the opportunity this provides both Apollo Hospitals and ourselves to implement first-ever digital health projects in Australia by leveraging the extensive learnings and practical experience at Apollo Hospitals,” Professor Bain said.
“In particular we are keen to locally test and cross-validate the exciting clinical AI work being done by the team at Apollo Hospitals.”
The sharing of data and technology will help Monash to access the learnings from deidentified health data from a pool of more than 200 million patients across Apollo Hospitals.
This will in turn enable significant advancement in research, especially to train artificial intelligence algorithms to identify and diagnose different diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
In addition to knowledge sharing and educational engagement the organisations also intend to establish a regular multinational Health AI event where they share research, results, common problems and challenges among participants.
Apollo Hospitals’ Dr Sujoy Kar celebrated the collaboration and welcomed steps towards the translation of AI research to create real-world impact in the medical sector.
“We at Apollo Hospitals are doing some cutting-edge work on clinical AI and its safe implementation. We are very excited at what this new partnership with Monash FIT will bring as part of our global collaborations in this space,” Dr Kar said.