After the success of first edition of Healthcare Innovation Challenge (HIC), a unique initiative by the NASSCOM Centre of Excellence CoE- IoT AI - a MeitY initiative with State Govt., today launched Healthcare Innovation Challenge (HIC) 2.0. The one-of-its-kind initiative aims to address the challenges faced by healthcare providers in digital technology adoption. The use case sponsors include some of the hospitals from HIC#2 and some new hospitals looking to work with CoE for their digital transformation.

Healthcare Innovation Challenge (HIC) 2.0

This has been a transformational year for Indias healthcare, especially healthcare technologies. Initiatives like Healthcare Innovation Challenge will aid the governments efforts to promote digital agenda in Indias healthcare infrastructure to make it more resilient, competitive and future-ready. Digital Technology solutions for doctors and patients including telemedicine and teleconsultation have helped us to take healthcare access to Indias hinterland in the pandemic. Enabling emerging technologies using data-based approach will enable more innovation through CoEs, thereby providing affordable services in every part of the country, said Mr. Saurabh Gaur, IAS, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

The key objectives of the HIC include driving operational excellence by enabling automation of administrative processes and digitization of clinical workflows through the adoption of digital technology solutions; enabling healthcare providers to nominate use cases as per the digital solution needs and driving the program to enable the curation, evaluation deployment of technology-led innovative solutions that address the nominated use cases. In this edition, the healthcare providers across the country are invited to nominate use cases as per their digital solution needs. The HIC#2 partner hospitals include KIMS Health, Mahajan Imaging, Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre, Sankara Netralaya and Zydus Hospitals.

For this edition of HIC, healthcare providers have been nominated for use cases which include Converting radiology reports and images into multimedia files, Centralized tele-radiology reporting, Homecare patient monitoring solutions, Digital clinical assistant for integrating with legacy EHR, AI-based cancer diagnosis and OT Automation. After nominations by the partner hospitals, applications for solutions are invited at pan India level.During the 1st edition of HIC, 125+ applications were received from various solution providers across India which were then pre-screened by the CoE team down to 23. The pre-screened applications were presented to the jury panelists.Three jury panels were created amongst 25key stakeholders from 18 healthcare organizations including hospitals, pharma companies, med-tech enterprises diagnostic chains. Winners, runners up and other special mentions were announced during the finale.

The event witnessed participation from dignitaries including Dr. Girdhar Gyani, Director General, AHPI, Mr. Girish Raghavan, Vice President, GE Healthcare India Digital Engineering, Dr. Jayshankar Das, Director -Research, Institute of Medical Science, SUM, Ms. Kavita Lamror, Director, Sanofi, Mr. Debashish Roy, Head Digital and Strategic Initiatives, Abbott, Dr. Anil Kukreja, Vice President - Medical Affairs and Regulatory, Astra Zeneca, Mr. Manu Gupta, Vice President -IT, Cadila Pharma, Mr. Ashutosh Inamdar, Sr. General Manager - Strategy, Lupin, Mr. Ishaq Quadri, Vice President, HIMSS India Chapter, Mr. Chandra Mouli CIO, Sankara Nethralaya, Mr. JP Dwivedi, CIO, Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute, Mr. Manish Kumar Rai, HeadIT, Zydus Hospitals, Mr. Sreeni Venugopal, Group Chief Information Officer, KIMS Health, Dr. Vasanth Venugopal, Consultant Radiologist Head of Imaging Research, Mahajan Imaging.

About NASSCOM Center of Excellence

The NASSCOM Center of Excellence -IoT AI is the largest collaborative innovation platform in the emerging technologies of IoT, Analytics, AI/ML, AR/VR and Robotics for Digital Transformation. The main objective of the CoE is to help Indian Deep-Tech Startups Companies leverage cutting edge technologies to build market-ready products. Through the Startups Program, CoE aims to build industry capable talent in an entrepreneurial ecosystem by facilitating Incubation, Funding, Acceleration, Industry Connect and Mentoring. NASSCOM CoE was set up in July 2016 as part of the Digital India initiative of MeitY, with the objective of aiding innovative start-ups in the emerging technologies. NASSCOM CoE-IoT has centres in Bengaluru, Gurugram, Gandhinagar Vizag.