NASSCOM CoE launches Healthcare Innovation Challenge 2.0
to focus on digital transformation of healthcare

 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.

“This has been a transformational year for India’s healthcare, especially healthcare technologies. Initiatives like Healthcare Innovation Challenge will aid the government’s efforts to promote digital agenda in India’s 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 India’s 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. 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 25 key 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. 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, Head  IT, Zydus Hospitals, Mr. Sreeni Venugopal, Group Chief Information Officer, KIMS Health, Dr. Vasanth Venugopal, Consultant Radiologist & Head of Imaging Research, Mahajan Imaging.