AI in Healthcare and Wellness: Conversation with Ashok Soota

This episode of the School Bell Podcast features Ashok Soota, iconic IT leader (Mindtree, Happiest Minds) and now founder of Happiest Health and SCAN, a nonprofit research organisation focused on ageing and neurological disorders.

He shares how a family member's neurological illness and his own experience with a wrongly recommended angioplasty pushed him from IT into healthcare and medical research. That journey led to building institutions that combine technology, ethics, and wellness.

A big chunk of the conversation is about how AI is transforming healthcare — from radiology and cardiac care to diagnosis, prediction and telemedicine. AI can assist doctors, improve decisions, and eventually even act as a check against unnecessary procedures. But Soota stresses: AI should assist doctors, not replace them, and healthcare must remain both “high-tech and high-touch.”

He repeatedly brings the focus back to wellness over illness: lifestyle, nutrition, environment and mental health. He talks about the growing crisis of mental wellness in young people, the pressure of academics and social media, and appreciates Bethany's strong counselling and digital detox policies.

Soota also explains the importance of the gut microbiome, stem cells and future programs like Happy Healthy Lifespan and Happy Healthy Ageing, where regular testing, nutrition guidance and preventive care will help people stay well longer.

On careers, he points to new opportunities at the intersection of AI and healthcare — bioinformatics, medtech, remote care, “ICU as a service,” expert systems and more.

The conversation closes with advice to schools and parents: start wellness early, teach children balance with technology, food and habits, and build a mindset where health and wellness are seen as the default state to protect, not just crises to fix.