NHA, IIT Kanpur partner to revolutionise AI in healthcare

New Delhi: The National Health Authority (NHA) on Wednesday announced a partnership with the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) Kanpur to revolutionise artificial intelligence (AI) in health research.

As part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), IIT Kanpur will develop a federated learning platform across a variety of machine learning model pipelines, a quality-preserving database, and an open benchmarking platform for comparing and validating AI models. The institute will also create a consent management system for research under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM).

“This very important MoU under the ABDM will provide an open public benchmarking platform for comparing and validating AI models,” said Apurva Chandra, Union Health Secretary.

The platform will be operated and governed by NHA and use the data for improving health outcomes in the country. “It will use the data available under the ABDM to create a public benchmark for AI models for quantifying and diagnosing diseases against which other AI models can be benchmarked,” Chandra said. The Health secretary added that “one of the biggest issues related to AI models in the healthcare sector is the availability and efficacy of disease diagnosis data which will be tackled by this collaboration. In a clinical setting, the availability of reliable data will lead to better outcomes and result in better diagnosis.”

Launched in September 2021, ABDM aims to establish a robust digital health ecosystem and integrate various healthcare entities -- hospitals, clinics, labs, pharmacies, health insurance companies, and more -- to improve patient care, accessibility, and affordability.

AI has the potential to revolutionise India’s healthcare ecosystem and when coupled with ABDM’s offering of a digitised health ecosystem, it can lead to significant advancements in disease diagnosis, treatment planning, and patient outcomes.

Further, the new platform will offer numerous benefits, including trustworthy AI models, improved data access, and statistical quality preservation. “This partnership marks a significant step forward in harnessing the power of AI for our country’s healthcare,” said L. S. Changsan, Addl. Secretary, Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare & CEO, NHA.

“It will help provide researchers with access to high-quality data and a platform for collaboration with other stakeholders of the health ecosystem while taking into account all aspects of data privacy. It will also accelerate the development of AI-powered health solutions that address critical health challenges,” Changsan added.