Tech

'Tsunami' of A.I. coming into health care, tech CEO says

Key Points
  • Artificial intelligence (AI) will play a "massive" role in health care, according to Naveen Jain, founder of Viome
  • Jain said a "tsunami" of AI is coming to the sector
Naveen Jain
Tim Boyle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Artificial intelligence (AI) will play a "massive" role in health care, a technology entrepreneur told CNBC on Thursday.

Naveen Jain, the founder of health technology firm Viome, said that there is a big wave of AI coming into the health sector.

"This is a tsunami that's coming," Jain told CNBC in a TV interview from the Slush technology conference in Helsinki, Finland.

"The sensors are becoming so cheap. For the first time in our lifetime, we are able to look deep inside our body to know exactly what is going on."

Viome offers a service that lets a user send in a stool sample to be analyzed by AI. It then produces a personalized diet and nutrition plan in order to improve the user's help. Jain believes food could become the "next drug," eliminating the need for traditional medicine.

"AI is going to play the biggest role because there is so much data that no humans can every process," he said.

A number of start-ups are using AI to solve health problems. And companies like Google's Deepmind are looking to apply AI to health also.