India needs to skill 1.25 M healthcare professionals annually in digital health and AI: FICCI-KPMG report

As India accelerates its adoption of digital health technologies and artificial intelligence (AI), building a future-ready healthcare workforce has become a strategic imperative. Released at the 20th edition of FICCI HEAL, the FICCI-KPMG in India knowledge paper, “Skilling India’s healthcare workforce for digital health and AI”, examines the emerging workforce requirements of the healthcare sector and outlines a roadmap for strengthening digital and AI capabilities across the healthcare ecosystem.

According to the report, India currently has approximately 9.01 million registered healthcare professionals, but continues to face challenges related to workforce availability, distribution, specialisation, and digital readiness. The paper highlights a shift in workforce priorities from a  “capacity and numbers” challenge to a “capacity + capability + productivity” transformation agenda, enabled through digital health and AI skilling.

It identifies five major drivers accelerating healthcare workforce transformation: evolving regulatory requirements, new-age care delivery models, changing consumer expectations, growing digitisation for operational efficiency, and expansion of technology-enabled healthcare infrastructure.

The report proposes an indicative National Digital Health and AI Competency Framework (NDH-AICF) comprising a three-tier workforce architecture: Digitally Enabled Care Workforce, AI-Augmented Clinical and Operational Workforce, and Specialist Digital Health & AI Cadres.

By 2035, the healthcare ecosystem is expected to witness the emergence of 20+ new digital health and AI-enabled roles, spanning clinical informatics, health data science, AI validation, privacy, cybersecurity, interoperability and digital operations.