Apollo Hospitals CEO, Preventive Healthcare, Sathya Sriram discusses “Is the burden of disease higher on women?” at the summit. | Photo by Akila Easwaran
Satya Sriram, CEO of Preventive Healthcare at Apollo Hospitals, said there is a need to address the historic gap in collecting data on women and collect more women-centric data.
Speaking during a conversation on the topic “Is the disease burden higher on women?” at the Hindu Tamil Nadu Women’s Summit 2024 on Tuesday, Sriram spoke about leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to better address women’s concerns and said, “To build good AI, you need consistent data… The challenge we have to address is the huge gap, the historic gap, in data collection on women.”
“If we recognise that now and build the dataset in a way that allows us to build a model specific to women, then we have a chance of building the right model. At Apollo Hospitals, we have been studying our database of mammograms for the last few years and looking at those images and building algorithms to try to find ways to predict breast cancer earlier or predict the risk of breast cancer so that we can apply an entirely different screening protocol to others who are at lower risk,” she explained.
When asked if the disease burden is greater in women, she said the answer is yes: “Biologically and physiologically, women are different from men. They have different reproductive and hormonal health, which is a monthly pain for many of us. But they also have the benefit of protecting women from heart disease until menopause. Women with diabetes are at exactly the same risk for heart disease as men with diabetes,” she said. The disease burden is greater in women, she added, because many diseases are diagnosed much less often than women.
On access to healthcare, she cited data from Apollo Hospitals’ preventive health check-ups, saying only 35 per cent women attend health check-ups. “We are largely preventing ourselves from being proactive about our health,” she said.
She pointed out that one woman dies of breast cancer every eight minutes in India. Studies have shown that Indian women are diagnosed with breast cancer 10 years younger than their white counterparts. “It is really important for us to be aware of the underlying risk factors for breast cancer. How many people know that age at menarche and age at first birth affect the risk of breast cancer? Breast cancer is one of the most curable cancers if detected early,” she added.
“Women generally don’t put themselves first. So my appeal is to put the women close to you first. Let’s support each other. Men, put the women close to you first,” she said.
The Hindu’s Tamil Nadu Women’s Summit 2024 has been organised in association with Guidance Tamil Nadu. The summit is organised by Naga Foods in collaboration with Tamil Nadu Skill Development Corporation, KBR India and Indian Bank. Prestige, VFS Global, KPL, Chennai Port and United India Insurance are associate partners. Other partners include Grundfos (Sustainability Partner), Apollo Pro Health (Healthcare Partner), Chennai Metro Rail (Mobility), Nippon Paint (Colour), ITC Mangaldeep (Fragrance), Confederation of Indian Industry and CII Indian Women’s Network (Industry), CREDAI Chennai (Real Estate Industry) and Puthiyathalamurai TV (Television Partner).
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