The National Health Authority (NHA) and IIT Kanpur signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the development of digital public goods through AI in healthcare, here on Wednesday.

The MoU was signed by LS Changsan, Additional Health Secretary and CEO, NHA and Manindra Agrawal, Director, IIT Kanpur, in presence of Health Secretary Apurva Chandra.

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 on the occasion, the health secretary complimented 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 said, “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 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.”

In her address, Changsan said, “This partnership marks a significant step forward in harnessing the power of AI for our country’s healthcare. This partnership 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.”

She added that the MoU would be a benchmark in digital public health goods that will leverage AI and upcoming technologies to strengthen digital public health infrastructure.