Vision Language Models for Next-Generation Healthcare

Artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving rapidly, moving from predictive systems toward a new era dominated by generative technologies. Among the most influential advances are language models, which have expanded into diverse forms capable of addressing increasingly complex and domain-specific challenges. One of the most transformative developments is the emergence of vision language models (VLMs), which integrate visual and textual understanding to enable richer forms of analysis and interaction. By learning relationships between images and text through large-scale training, these models open new possibilities for applications that require deeper contextual interpretation of visual data. In healthcare, VLMs are particularly promising, supporting innovations such as visual question answering, automated medical report interpretation, and enhanced diagnostic and analytical capabilities. Vision Language Models for Next-Generation Healthcare provides one of the first comprehensive explorations of VLMs in healthcare, highlighting how their multimodal capabilities can transform diagnostics, clinical decision-making, and patient care. By combining insights from computer science, biomedical engineering, and clinical practice, this book offers a unified reference on VLMs tailored for healthcare. Covering topics such as augmented report generation, radiology, and workflow intelligence, this book is a critical emerging resource for graduate and doctoral students, computer scientists, biomedical engineers, healthcare informatics, medical researchers, and more.

Pethuru Raj , PhD is a chief architect at the Edge AI division of Reliance Jio Platforms Ltd. (JPL) Bangalore. Previously. Worked in IBM Global Cloud Centre of Excellence (CoE), Wipro consulting services (WCS), and Robert Bosch Corporate Research (CR). He had gained over 24 years of IT industry experience and nine years of research experience. He has finished the CSIR-sponsored PhD at Anna University, Chennai. He continued with the UGC-sponsored postdoctoral research in the Department of Computer Science and Automation, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. After that, he got two international research fellowships (JSPS and JST) to work as a research scientist for 3.5 years in two leading Japanese universities. He focuses on some of the emerging technologies, such as Multimodal Generative and Agentic AI, AI Model Optimization Techniques, the Internet of Things Use Cases, Cloud-native and Edge Computing Paradigms, Reliability Engineering, 6G Communication and Blockchain Technologies, Quantum-safe Cryptography Algorithms. He has authored and edited more than 65 technology books, published more than 60 research papers, contributed more than 55 book chapters, submitted a couple of international patents, completed a few IT architecture certifications (TOGAF and ITIL), delivered keynote addresses in 25 international confluences, conducted numerous technical sessions across colleges, universities, and institutes of eminence in India and abroad, participated as a panel member in IT industry symposiums, written several white papers for the IT companies, where he worked, articulated, built and deployed a few state-of-the-art IT products, solutions, and services for the organizations' growth. He has conducted over ten knowledge-sharing sessions to demystify several cutting-edge technologies and tools for software engineers and architects

V. Kavitha is currently working as an Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science with Cognitive Systems, Sri Ramakrishna College of Arts & Science, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. She obtained her Ph.D Degree in2014 in the broad area of Data Mining. She has over 19 Yrs of teaching and research experience. She has been supervising research scholars, post-graduate end undergraduate students in the recent areas of Cyber Security. She has published more than 75 research papers in International as well as National Journals, International Conferences and Book chapters. She has delivered technical talk in the areas of Big Data Analysis and Cyber Security. Cyber Security, IoT Security, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning are some of her research interests.

M. Baby Nirmala is working as an Associate Professor and Head in the PG & Research Department of Computer Science, Holy Cross College (Autonomous), Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India. She has 24 years of teaching experience and 7 years of Industrial Experience. She was positioned as Head of the Department, Nodal officer for AICTE and Coordinator for various Clubs and programs. She has presented several papers in National and International Conferences and published number of research articles in Scopus indexed Journals and IEEE Xplore Library. She has authored 4 chapters in 3 books with Springer and IGI Global. She has organized 5 National and 11 International Conferences. She has served as a Consultant for many Government and Non-Government Organizations. Her areas of specialization are Data Engineering, Big data Analytics, Graph Analytics, Big data full stack development, Semantic Web, Data Science. Now she focuses on Generative, Explainable AI and Large Language models (LLMs).