The National Health Authority (NHA) and IIT Kanpur have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to build digital public goods for artificial intelligence in healthcare.
IIT Kanpur will develop 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 the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) as part of this MoU.
The NHA will then run and govern the platform, unlocking AI’s great potential for improving health outcomes, according to a statement from the Union Health Ministry.
Speaking on the occasion, Union Health Secretary Apurva Chandra highlighting the importance of this MoU, Chandra stated that “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.
Chandra said “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,” he added.
IIT Kanpur Director Professor Manindra Agrawal said “this partnership with the NHA will contribute towards democratizing access to quality healthcare in India”.
“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,” he added.
This platform will offer numerous benefits 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.
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, the statement said.
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