Healthcare systems around the world are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs. During the recent AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare unveiled a national strategy to deploy AI in medicine “that works for every patient, in every region, regardless of income, language, or geography.” To understand how these technologies can make healthcare more accessible and affordable, we spoke with Sachin Bajpai, an experienced healthcare AI leader who has worked with major medical organizations through companies including PwC, Deloitte, and CitiusTech.
Bajpai believes that one of the biggest opportunities for AI lies in early intervention. “AI systems can analyze medical and behavioral patterns early, allowing healthcare providers to identify high-risk patients before their conditions become critical or require expensive emergency and intensive care,” he explains.
One example of this approach is a predictive AI system Bajpai developed while at PwC, a global professional services firm operating in more than 150 countries. The model focused on elderly patients covered by U.S. government-sponsored insurance programs and identified those at risk of requiring costly skilled nursing facility care—one of the most expensive forms of long-term treatment. During a six-month pilot involving over 300,000 patients, the system identified around 20,000 high-risk cases and reduced medical spending by nearly $10 million. The program later expanded across 21 U.S. states.
Bajpai’s approach is especially valuable in countries with large populations and overstretched healthcare systems, such as India. “The earlier healthcare providers can identify risk, the more effectively they can intervene,” he says.
Beyond prediction, AI can fundamentally change how healthcare systems manage resources. “Having spent many years in India, I know hospitals and doctors often work under enormous pressure because of the sheer number of patients they see every day,” Bajpai notes. “AI can reduce some of that operational burden, improve coordination, and give medical professionals more time to focus on patient care.”
Much of Bajpai’s work has focused on solving large-scale operational challenges. Before joining PwC, he led the development of a cloud-based clinical reporting platform at CitiusTech, a global healthcare technology company. The solution earned certification from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), allowing healthcare providers to use it for official quality reporting in the U.S. healthcare system. Within two years, the product expanded to a portfolio of 15 customers.
At PwC, where he now serves as Managing Director leading healthcare AI and data transformation, Bajpai has helped expand the company’s healthcare AI operations tenfold across the U.S., India, China, Poland, and Mexico. During his tenure, PwC’s healthcare AI solutions received major industry recognition, including Microsoft Partner of the Year awards.
Still, Bajpai emphasizes that technology alone is not enough. “For AI to work effectively in medicine, both doctors and patients need to trust the systems they use,” he explains. Building that trust requires transparency, regulatory compliance, data security, and a clear understanding of how AI-generated recommendations are produced and validated in clinical settings.
As AI adoption accelerates, experienced specialists like Bajpai play a crucial role in evaluating medical technology systems and advising healthcare clients and startup founders on technical strategy, scalability, and long-term performance. His cross-regional experience has given him a close view of how differently medical environments operate. “Healthcare systems in India operate across different languages, regions, and levels of infrastructure,” he says. “Developers need to train AI models on diverse and representative data so the systems can work reliably at scale.”
Despite these challenges, Bajpai believes India is well-positioned to become a major market for practical healthcare AI solutions, thanks to its strong engineering talent and rapidly growing digital infrastructure.
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