National Health Authority and IIT Kanpur sign MoU for development of digital public goods for AI in Healthcare

The National Health Authority (NHA) and IIT Kanpur signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in the presence of Union Health Secretary Apurva Chandra. The MoU was signed by L S Changsan, Addl. Secretary, Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and CEO, NHA; and Manindra Agrawal, Director, IIT Kanpur.

Under this MoU, a federated learning platform across a variety of machine learning model pipelines, a quality-preserving database, an open benchmarking platform for comparing and validating AI models, and a consent management system for research under Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) would be developed by IIT Kanpur. The platform will subsequently be operated and governed by NHA, thereby unlocking the immense potential of AI for improving health outcomes.

Speaking at the occasion, Apurva Chandra complemented the NHA and IIT Kanpur for signing this important MoU under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission that will provide an open public benchmarking platform for comparing and validating AI models.

Highlighting the importance of this MoU, Chandra stated, “Use of data for improving health outcomes is the envisaged goal of this partnership. 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.” He added, “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.”

Addressing the event, Changsan said, “This partnership marks a significant step forward in harnessing the power of AI for our country’s healthcare and 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.” She further added, “This MoU will be a benchmark in digital public health goods that will leverage AI and upcoming technologies to strengthen digital public health infrastructure.”

Manindra Agrawal, Director IIT Kanpur, stated, “This partnership with the NHA will contribute towards democratizing access to quality healthcare in India.” Agrawal further added, “Partnering with the NHA, IIT Kanpur aims to create a transformative platform that will empower researchers, healthcare providers, and policymakers to unlock the full potential of AI for improving health outcomes in India.”

This platform will offer numerous benefits, including:

• Trustworthy models: By enabling providers of AI models for healthcare applications to perform genuine out-of-set validation, and establish publicly verifiable performance benchmarks, this platform will foster trust in the consumer market for these applications.
• Improved data access: The platform will address the fragmentation of health data in our country, making it easier for researchers to access and analyze health data without data leaving the custody of data fiduciaries.
• Statistical quality preservation: Healthcare data is uniquely costly to acquire and through this platform will be protected against statistical dredging, without compromising on openness and innovation.

Punya Salila Srivastava, OSD, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare; Shri Kiran Gopal Vaska, Mission Director (ABDM), NHA and senior officials from the Ministry and representatives of IIT Kanpur were also present at the occasion.