The MoU was signed by LS Changsan, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare & CEO, NHA and IIT-Kanpur Director Manindra Agrawal, in the presence of Union Health Secretary Apurva Chandra, the health ministry said.
Under the MoU, the prestigious institute will develop a learning platform across a variety of machine learning model pipelines as well as a quality-preserving database.
Also, it will develop an open benchmarking platform to compare and validate AI models, besides a consent management system for research under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 27, 2021. ABDM is aimed at establishing a robust digital health ecosystem via active collaborations between the public and private sectors.
Subsequently, the NHA will govern and operate the platform, unlocking the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve health outcomes.
The Union Health Secretary hailed the NHA and IIT Kanpur for signing the MoU that will “provide an open public benchmarking platform for comparing and validating AI models.”
Chandra, while highlighting the MoU’s importance, noted that the “use of data for improving health outcomes is the envisaged goal of this partnership.”
The platform shall use the data available under Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission and create a public benchmark for AI models for “quantifying and diagnosing diseases against which other AI models can be benchmarked,” Chandra stated.
Talking about problems related to AI models in the health sector, Chandra stated that the issue regarding the availability and efficacy of disease diagnosis data 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,” the Union Health Secretary added.
LS Changsan said the collaboration marks a significant step forward in harnessing AI’s power for the 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 considering all aspects of data privacy. It will also accelerate the development of AI-powered health solutions that address critical health challenges,” she said.
Benefits of the platform:
- Trustworthy Models
It will enable providers of AI models for healthcare applications in order to perform genuine out-of-set validation, besides establishing publicly verifiable performance benchmarks. By doing so, it will foster trust in the consumer market for these applications.
- Improved Data Access
It will address the fragmentation of health data in India, thereby making it easier for the researchers to access and analyse health data without allowing it to leave the custody of data fiduciaries.
- Statistical Quality Preservation
As acquiring healthcare data is costly, the platform will protect it against statistical dredging, without compromising on openness and innovation.AI in healthcare:
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