hyderabad while artificial intelligence ai has been making inroads into the citys startup space for some time now there seems to be a sudden spurt in fledgling firms offering aidriven solutions in the healthcare and transport sectors reason affordable computingwe are seeing more and more startups launch aibased products its a mix of multiple factors that has resulted in this surge including maturing of some of the ai technologies making them easier to use computing has become much better and slightly more affordable too said ramesh loganathan professor coinnovation at iiithyderabad adding that currently half of the startups in the institutes lab are ai basedamong the many startups that have taken this route are nicheai that automates solutions for fraud detection at toll plazas and analyses auto insurance claims and docturnal that uses machine learning and ai to diagnose pulmonary tb just by listening to and interpreting a coughonward assist is yet another startup that is found using ai extensively to provide assistance in diagnosing and analysing various kinds of cancers speaking about the relevance of ai in the healthcare sector the companys cofounder dinesh koka said the usage of ai in healthcare requires a slightly more studied application of machine learning in the last twothree years a lot of cuttingedge work been done in ai also sophisticated deep learning algorithms have become more refined and easily available the easy access to tools needed for machine learning has also helped many startups offer solutions in the healthcare spaceexplaining how ai comes handy for his company koka said they use it to study momograms pep scans tissue biopsies etc that help pathologists in defining the type and grade of cancer since oncologists primarily depend on pathologists for the analysis and there is a huge dearth of pathologists the technology can bring down the time spent in diagnosis in fact this is way more accurate than the conventional method he addedone of the benefits that an ai based startup has is the lower recurring expenses say experts attributing the boost to this reduced cost although the initial investment in the case of an ai based startup is higher due to the added cost of the technology component it cuts down the need for manpower in the process employees salaries which is the biggest expense for a startup is reduced said sundeep kumar makthala president telangana information technology association tita