New Age Entrepreneurship – Analysing Prospects in Machine Learning to Drive Societal Change ML is the best way to give back to society

Boon of technology has changed the human civilization for good, as constant evolution in technology being intensively tracked and leveraged by new-age entrepreneurs, it only becomes imminent that aspects such as the Internet-of-Things (IoT), artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning and more; are utilised by entrepreneurs to develop technology-driven models to actually solve societal problems.

In this regard, with futuristic technology penetration being the focal point; Entrepreneur India lists the relevance of a domain called Machine Learning for entrepreneurs in 2018 to harness and develop solutions such that societal problems are mitigated whilst driving recognition for developing unconventional solutions.

In fact, experts and entrepreneurs believe that entrepreneurial prospects for entrepreneurs working on harnessing ML are at an all time peak at this juncture:

Exciting Entrepreneurial prospects in Machine Learning

"Machine Learning has the potential to help create a utopian world without any disease, crime, and poverty," states Yogesh Bhatt who is Vice President at Bengaluru-based Manipal Prolearn; a unit of Manipal Global Education Services.

This is substantiated when we consider the fact that data scientists today have been working at the heart of societal issues in domains healthcare and medicine; which are undoubtedly in a definite need for disruption.

Specifically, Machine Learning is now driving doctors through predictive analytics; towards aspects such as enhancing the success rates when it comes to diagnosing and treating life threatening ailments such as clinical depression and cancer.

These aspects potentially provide exciting prospects for entrepreneurs, to come up with models driven by ML, as there practically (not theoretically) exists opportunity for impact to introduce positive changes in the lives of people.

"ML is well on its way to revolutionize cancer care by providing an analytical approach towards understanding cancer as a disease," adds Bhatt.

Application of Machine learning in societal impact sectors – Data Science Entrepreneurs take note

For new entrepreneurs, the best societal impact to think of is healthcare in India which has continued to see dismal trends with respect to reachability to people and even actual diagnosis and treatment of ailments.

"Healthcare provides the right setting for big data analytics with enormous patient data in the form of diagnostic reports, radiological images, clinical observations, and so on," informs Bhatt.

For data crunching, entrepreneurs could integrate data across different platforms to improve ML's predictive abilities. In this scenario, Artificial Intelligence (AI) aspects would emerge as the nervous system of the healthcare industry to enable doctors globally to collaborate and develop effective techniques for treatment.

This means that the healthcare industry in India could potentially oversee models helping in early diagnosis of ailments, along with serving as virtual nursing assistants, and even in robot-assisted surgeries.

Setting newer trends in precision medicine

"Machine Learning is the central cog in precision medicine, which suggests the alternate paths for a therapy," iterates Bhatt.

With the enormous amount of data at their disposal, data science entrepreneurs could also leverage ML in predicting epidemic outbreaks; by learning these patterns. Now, imagine this scenario in a country like India; where almost every year there is a new virus causing an epidemic (the most recent being the Nipah).

Making other sectors smarter through ML-driven entrepreneurial models

Apart from healthcare, sectors such as automobiles and even smart homes also form the next layer with respect to facing potential disruption. In automobiles, ML entrepreneurial models have resulted in the advent of self-driving cars. This is an area which is currently being explored by data scientists in India; but facing hurdles with respect to the infrastructure and road conditions. Hence, your entrepreneurial aspirations could be put to test here.

"By fortifying the security factor with a capability of identifying objects in a fraction of second, the future homes and neighborhoods will be much safer places" adds Bhatt.

Demystifying entrepreneurial challenges

However, with the Indian context facing a multitude of challenges, with respect to training and nurturing the data-driven talent, Bhatt states that (as per a Manipal Global Education survey) that data scientists positions are amongst the hardest to fill within organizations.

However, there is good news; in the form of corporate acceleration programs which are now on the rise and aimed at according a fillip to data-driven entrepreneurship. A notable trend amongst these accelerators has been a special focus on healthcare.

"Now, even professional learning organizations have started programs to help create the data scientist talent pool,"signs-off Bhatt. In summary, the situation in the market is currently favorable and in utmost need of your entrepreneurial talents; so, enthusiasts roll up your sleeves.