New Delhi, May 7: IndiaAI, the flagship artificial intelligence initiative of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), on Wednesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to strengthen the use of Artificial Intelligence in India’s healthcare and biomedical research sectors.
The partnership, implemented through the Digital India Corporation, aims to create a nationally coordinated and interoperable AI ecosystem for healthcare by combining IndiaAI’s technological infrastructure with ICMR’s expertise in biomedical and public health research.
Officials said the collaboration seeks to accelerate the development of scalable and responsible AI-driven healthcare solutions while ensuring adherence to ethical standards, data privacy norms and regulatory safeguards.
Under the agreement, ICMR will contribute anonymised and ethics-approved biomedical datasets, AI models and toolkits developed under its Medical Information Data for AI Solutions (MIDAS) framework to the AIKosh dataset platform. The move is expected to improve access to quality healthcare datasets for researchers, startups and innovators across the country.
IndiaAI, in turn, will provide ICMR access to GPU-based and high-performance computing infrastructure at subsidised rates under defined service-level agreements. Officials said the support would help address infrastructure constraints often faced in advanced AI-based medical research.
The collaboration will also focus on co-developing AI-powered healthcare applications targeting priority public health challenges in India. These projects will be guided by ICMR’s disease burden data and supported through IndiaAI’s technological ecosystem.
The MoU builds on earlier cooperation between the two institutions. In September 2025, IndiaAI and ICMR’s National Institute for Research in Digital Health and Data Sciences were recognised as Pioneer Countries under the HealthAI Global Regulatory Network, a multilateral initiative co-founded with the United Kingdom and Singapore to advance responsible governance of AI in healthcare.
Officials said a subsequent tripartite agreement involving IndiaAI, ICMR and HealthAI further strengthened efforts to operationalise a robust AI governance and innovation framework for the healthcare sector.
The government said the latest partnership is expected to promote innovation at the intersection of healthcare and technology while strengthening India’s capacity in AI-led medical research, diagnostics and public health systems.
