India to focus on strengthened accessibility to digital health

The country aims for greater collaboration in areas of AI.

India’s Union Health Secretary, Shri Apurva Chandra has met with Karen DeSalvo, Google’s Chief Health Officer to discuss ongoing engagements in enhancing the public’s accessibility to digital health tools.

In a side event during the 77th World Health Assembly of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva, Chandra expressed the need for exploring possible collaboration in areas such as Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Chandra also sought the organisation’s support for the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) including building an Automated Retinal Disease Assessment (ARDA) and spreading awareness of the initiative amongst the students and the startup community.

Meanwhile, the Google team highlighted its existing engagement with India’s National Health Authority (NHA). 

According to the team, Google Research and the NHA are working on developing an open-sourced ABDM wrapper to simplify its sandbox integration process.