Catalysing Digital Healthcare: NASSCOM CoE – IoT and AI Launches Healthcare Innovation Challenge 3

New Delhi, February 27, 2022: After the success of first two editions, the NASSCOM Centre of Excellence (CoE) – IoT & AI announced the launch of third edition of Healthcare Innovation Challenge (HIC 3). In this one-of-its-kind case drive program, there is strong participation from Hospitals, Diagnostic Chains, Insurance Players, pharma companies and govt. delegates, technology enterprises and Deeptech start-ups. While previous editions were focused primarily on hospitals, the HIC 3 has attracted interest from insurance players and technology players, who are coming onboard as use-case sponsors. Going forward such broad-based deployment participation is going to accelerates the digital technology impact in healthcare sector towards the vision of USD 1 trillion digital economy as defined by The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY).

In this edition of HIC, the use cases have been nominated in different areas which include automated credit business settlement, inpatient volume prediction based on outpatient volume, early detection of microbes, prescription digitalisation using voice recognition, comprehensive patient care, OPD automation, preventive health checkup tracking, AI-based surgical video, recording & reporting and cashless OPD expense management.

“Co-creation of Innovation and cooperation between multiple stakeholders play a crucial role and the pandemic has served as a living testament of this. In India, platforms like NASSCOM and India-Sweden Healthcare Innovation Centre are supporting the Start-ups by providing right mentorship and testbeds in their growth acceleration. We encourage Indian Start-ups to leverage this opportunity and apply for 3rd healthcare innovation challenge of NASSCOM,” ​​said Ms. Cecilia Oskarsson, Trade & Invest Commissioner, Embassy of Sweden.

Eminent dignitaries such as Sanjeev Malhotra (CEO, NASSCOM Center of Excellence – IoT & AI), Dr. Girdhar Gyani (Director General, AHPI), Ayan Choudhury (VP, Imaging System Software, Wipro GE Healthcare India), Ms. Cecilia Oskarsson, Trade & Invest Commissioner, Embassy of Sweden, Dr. Kiran R Aatre (Dy. Director – Business Development, Applied Materials), Dr. Manish Diwan, Head – Strategic Partnership & Entrepreneurship Development, BIRAC and others graced the event with their esteemed presence.

“Healthcare is going through rapid transformation and providing comprehensive patient care connecting hospital systems, laboratory diagnostics, physicians, etc. is the need of the hour. To provide timely diagnostics and treatment, connecting these functions remotely is crucial. Tele-medicine, tele-monitoring along with digital solutions can provide all-round patient experience via usage of niche technologies like AI/ML, deep learning and secure data management,” ​​said Ayan Choudhury (VP, Imaging System Software, Wipro GE Healthcare India).

The launch event witnessed engaging and thought-provoking panel discussions from Use Case sponsors which included Apollo Hospitals, HealthCare Global Enterprises (HCG), Max Healthcare, Hinduja Hospital, Cygnus Hospital, Aditya Birla Health Insurance etc. It also featured keynote sessions from AHPI, GE Healthcare, Medix Global, AWS, Applied Materials, Mitsubishi, etc. The event also hosted health-tech investors such as BIRAC, India Health Fund, WHealth Ventures, Somerset Indus, Capital Partners.

“Due to highly regulated nature, the digital adoption in healthcare poses much higher challenges for solution developers. Innovators need to co-create, get accepted as safest choice for user, be able to demonstrate value and scale, unlock real clinical value and do much more than what would be required in other sectors,” said Dr. Kiran R Aatre, Dy. Director – Business Development, Applied Materials.

“Healthcare technology solutions must have a very strong foothold in terms of technology for it to get deployed and scale. It should have a clear value proposition, differentiating from the existing portfolio of standard of care and it needs to be future-ready,” said Dr. Manish Diwan, Head – Strategic Partnership & Entrepreneurship Development, BIRAC.

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