Velchamy Sankarling on healthcare strategy
From Invited Guest Lecture by Mr. Velchamy Sankarlingam, USA · · Indian Federation of Neurorehabilitation
“I think when we started, it wasn't that way. Uh it is not by design. But the pandemic changed everything. You know, if you look at pandemic like with the schools, schools, maybe you can pause education, but health care, I mean, that was the biggest challenge, I would say, during the pandemic because uh uh first of all, all these health care, I mean, the the problem was like you don't want to have any contact. And then health care is one of the areas you do have a lot of contact. So, I mean, we it is basically a necessity. It became necessity like how do we do tele health? But what we found is what is surprising is all the clinicians, all the practitioners, I think they realized that this opens up like a huge opportunity to improve the service, but also expand the service. And we've been working with a lot of them. And and also in terms of what else can it can it be done? It's not just like a video conferencing. You can basically, if you look at today, uh I mean, uh all the AI capabilities and all that. So, we expanded Zoom from just a video conference into adjacencies like Zoom phone, Zoom contact center. But then if you look at AI as a platform, what it has done is it can basically take a lot of uh overhead from clinicians. So, I'll give you an example. So, today, when you basically provide tele health, uh Zoom can actually document the whole thing for you. It can actually not just document, it can document so that way you as clinicians can actually focus on the patient. You don't need to worry about taking notes. But it also adds it to your EHR. If you have like a electronic health record, and it is all like compliant with HIPAA and all of that. And not only that, I know like with tele medicine, there is not just one clinician or one physician that is involved. You have a team. Uh so, all the information that you actually go through this can actually be shared with everybody. And you can also have like a continuous you have a data of like every visit, and you can build each visit on the previous visit. So, the way we look at a lot of the innovation that's happening there is it's not like something that is replacing physicians, but it is actually trying to make physicians like more effective. And AI, I don't think it can ever make like a clinical judgment. But it can actually bring more clinical focus to all the physicians and remove a lot of the overhead and the paperwork and everything that uh you you are doing.”
On , Velchamy Sankarling, President of Product & Engineering at Zoom Video Communications, spoke about healthcare strategy during Invited Guest Lecture by Mr. Velchamy Sankarlingam, USA on Indian Federation of Neurorehabilitation.
About Velchamy Sankarling
Velchamy Sankarlingam, President of Product & Engineering at Zoom Video, delivered an invited guest lecture on April 1, 2024, discussing the company's values and technological developments. He stated that during the pandemic, Zoom's focus was on "fill[ing] wherever the gaps are" and prioritizing customers, describing it as "a moment of time where we need to show our values" rather than a business decision. Sankarlingam also commented on AI's role in healthcare, saying it "can never make like a clinical judgment" but can "bring more clinical focus to all the physicians and remove a lot of the overhead and the paperwork." Sankarlingam discussed Zoom's AI capabilities, including a "customer AI companion" that can integrate with other software to pull patient data and provide summaries. He predicted that by 2030, "a Zoom call will be able to do things much better than what you would be able to do in person." Reflecting on his personal values, he cited Dr. Abdul Kalam and Kamaraj as figures who "went against the tide," adding that he has left jobs when they did not align with his value system.