According to reports, the extensive collection of unstructured clinical data in the healthcare sector is quickly becoming a significant market opportunity for companies developing Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based solutions.

As the majority of patient information remains trapped in free-text notes, reports, and PDFs, AI companies in healthcare are increasingly strategizing to access and profit from this unexploited data.

Unstructured clinical data refers to healthcare information without a specific format, encompassing clinical notes, medical images, laboratory reports, and communication with patients. Due to its lack of structure in conventional databases, it necessitates sophisticated tools such as natural language processing (NLP) and image recognition to derive meaningful insights, potentially enhancing diagnostics, tailored care, and medical research.

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Experts think that revealing this concealed data could transform everything from hospital functions to medical studies.

"Addressing the unstructured data challenge presents the greatest opportunity for healthcare AI, as it releases the 80 percent of health data that is presently inaccessible, enabling the complete clinical narrative of a patient to become computable, scalable, and actionable," stated Saksham Arora, founder of the startup and founding engineer at Savant Bio.

"For years, the essential clinical information--a physician's thought process, the patient's narrative, the situation of symptoms--has remained 'dark data,' hidden in unstructured notes and printed documents."

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"Conventional software, which relies solely on structured fields (such as billing codes or lab results), completely overlooks this nuance. AI, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), represents the first technology capable of reading and comprehending this chaotic, human-created data on a large scale, transforming it into the resource for all other valuable applications," Arora states.

Companies like Eka Care, HealthPlix, and Axone Health are leading players in this sector. Tracxn reports that India had merely eight AI-enabled healthcare firms in 2024, a slight rise from only two in 2011.

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A recent report from the global consultancy EY-Parthenon-OPPI emphasized the potential arising from the integration of AI and the adoption of advanced technology in India's healthcare sector.