Machines giving suggestions to doctors about treating their patients, a scene straight from a sci-fi movie and a fantasy of the healthcare community, is becoming a reality now.

In a first of its kind move, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently gave green signal to market IDx-DR, a medical device to detect diabetic retinopathy, a disease in which high blood sugar damages blood vessels in the retina of eyes and leads to the vision loss.

Made by the US-based IDx LLC, the software analyses images of the eye taken by a camera and tells the doctor accurately about the extent of the disease, called as 'diabetic retinopathy'. Approved last month, this is the first approval in the area of artificial intelligence that can potentially replace a specialized doctor to interpret medical imagery and decide on the medical outcome.

This week, the FDA gave go ahead to Boston-based Beta Bionics, which has a partnership with Novo Nordisk, to test its autonomous bionic pancreas that employs artificial intelligence to vary hormone doses in adults and children with Type 1 diabetes. Beta Bionics' iLet device, an infusion pump that mimics functions of a pancreas, can deliver required quantity of insulin with artificial intelligence to calculate and decide the dose delivery, based on the body weight and data with the help of a glucose monitor. The product is expected to reach markets by 2020.

Early this year, the FDA had approved a clinical decision support software that uses AI algorithms to help neurovascular specialists gauge brain deterioration.

The global digital therapeutics market, which includes apps, mobile health tools and related products, was estimated at $1.7 billion in 2016 and is expected to grow at 21 per cent compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2017 to 2025 to $9.4 billion by 2025, estimate various research agencies. So far over a dozen "prescription digital therapeutics" companies working in the area of diabetes management, cocaine and substance abuse, cardio vascular diseases etc., have come up in the west.

Sources say most of the leading drug makers in the world like Pfizer, GSK and Novartis have ongoing projects, in partnership with AI specialized companies and related drug discovery start-ups, to develop new drugs. The US FDA is also developing a framework to approve use of AI in regulating such healthcare products based on machine learning.

In India, the digital therapeutics and AI in healthcare is yet to catch up. Recently, Microsoft and Apollo Hospitals' group had partnered to create an AI based data network in cardiology.