AI investment touted for potential to lower medical costs

LONDON-BASED health and wellness company Biodenix said it sees artificial intelligence (AI) as holding the potential to lower medical costs and reducing unnecessary deaths in the Philippines.

In an interview, Biodenix Chief Executive Officer James Richman told BusinessWorld that he is considering investments of up to $1 billion in technologyrelated healthcare investments in the Philippines over five years.

“That will be the maximum, at the moment, until we see how it goes,” according to Mr. Richman who is also the chief investment officer of investment company JJ Richman.

He said that he aims to enhance and expand life by tapping AI to improve medical outcomes.

“The number one goal would be, of course, to increase efficiency and precision when it comes to decision-making by doctors,” he said.

He said that globally, doctors are under pressure due to the number of patients they deal with, which often causes them to miss issues in x-rays and scans.

“They can’t do it as fast as they’d like, so many patients wait too long; oftentimes, unfortunately, it ends up being fatal. So, we would like to minimize this error rate and increase the speed,” he added.

Asked how technology can help reduce healthcare costs, he said “reducing costs has always been one of the biggest benefits. Before even AI was introduced, simple automation reduced costs in healthcare, and now with AI it can be done even more.”

The savings are more apparent “if we implement it in the costliest of healthcare services, where the cost is high because things take a long time (due to much) manual processing done by expensive talent,” he added.

He said that experts and doctors with years of experience are expensive because they need to manually look at papers, scans, and perform analyses one at a time.

“If we can increase efficiency by reducing the time it takes for them to make a decision or recommendation, then, of course, as a result, the costs will go down,” he said.

He sees the technology being adopted in the largest Philippine hospitals within a year in the best case.

“That would be the ideal scenario. But because of policies and regulations, I don’t think we will be able to do it sooner than three years,” he added.

Mr. Richman said that he has set up meetings with big hospitals in Iloilo, Cebu, and Metro Manila.

“We have our own timelines, but we are up against regulators because we will be entering the health industry, and it involves people’s lives,” he said.

“So, it’s like, even though we set up timelines, we can’t always execute,” he added.