NEW DELHI, India — The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare announced a major escalation of its artificial intelligence integration strategy across the public health sector. The goal is to establish a robust framework to accelerate the research, testing and real-world implementation of AI-driven health care solutions. This national initiative aims to significantly bolster the country’s digital health infrastructure, improving diagnostic accuracy, treatment efficiency and patient outcomes on a population scale.
The cornerstone of this acceleration is the designation of three premier institutions—AIIMS Delhi, the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) Chandigarh and AIIMS Rishikesh—as National Centres of Excellence (CoEs) for AI in health care. These dedicated hubs will serve as crucial laboratories for developing, validating and deploying next-generation AI models specifically tailored for the nation’s diverse health care needs.
The Ministry’s efforts are backed by a comprehensive network of national partners, including the Central Tuberculosis Division, National Centre for Disease Control, ICMR and key technology and education ministries, with specialized technical support from Wadhwani AI.
Immediate Impact Highlights
The national AI push is already demonstrating significant clinical results across critical disease areas:
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Diabetic Retinopathy Screening: The MadhuNetrAI system, a breakthrough AI model for identifying diabetic retinopathy (DR), is now operational in 38 facilities across 11 states. Designed for use by primary health care workers, the system analyzes retinal images to classify the severity of DR and instantly flags urgent cases for specialist intervention. The program has successfully screened over 14,000 retinal images, directly benefiting more than 7,100 patients by enabling early detection.
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Enhanced Telemedicine Consistency: An advanced Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS), powered by AI, has been seamlessly integrated into the national eSanjeevani telemedicine platform. This tool ensures standardization of patient data logging and provides clinicians with AI-generated differential diagnosis suggestions. Between April 2023 and November 2025, the CDSS contributed to over 282 million eSanjeevani consultations, dramatically increasing clinical reliability across Health and Wellness Centres nationwide.
Commitment to Data Governance and Ethics
All AI models and data deployments strictly comply with the country’s stringent digital and data protection standards, including the Digital Personal Data Protection Act of 2023, the IT Act 2000 and comprehensive ethical and security guidelines set by ICMR and the Information Security Policy for Healthcare.
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