Ministry of Education establishes AI Centre of Excellence for Healthcare at IISc

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In line with the Government of India’s vision of “Make AI in India and Make AI Work for India,” the Ministry of Education has set up four Centres of Excellences in Artificial Intelligence (AI-CoEs), each hosted by a premier academic institution in India.

As part of this national initiative, the Translational AI for Networked Universal Healthcare (TANUH) Foundation has been established at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, as a dedicated AI Centre of Excellence in Healthcare, to advance AI-driven healthcare innovation at scale in the country.

TANUH AI-CoE is a Section 8 not-for-profit company that focuses on developing and deploying scalable AI solutions for the effective management of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) at the point of care. The centre operates as a multidisciplinary hub, bringing together clinicians, data scientists, and AI researchers.

Nine faculty members from IISc, spanning areas of digital health, machine learning, and public health, anchor the centre’s research programmes. TANUH’s core team, comprising executives, engineers, programme managers, and research staff, with significant industry experience, enables the translation of health-AI technologies from the lab to the population scale.

TANUH’s goal is to design and deploy tools for early detection, risk prediction, monitoring and personalised solutions across high-burden conditions such as oral cancer, breast cancer, retinal diseases, diabetes, and mental health. These tools will help frontline health workers, improve primary and hospital care, and include human decision-making to make sure that the care is safe and effective. The solutions are designed to be used directly where patients are treated, follow responsible AI standards, and are created and tested together with doctors and researchers at top national institutions like AIIMS, New Delhi.

TANUH has already launched Aarogya Aarohan, an application developed by the CoE’s Oral Cancer Screening team, in collaboration with AIIMS, ARTPARK, Biocon Foundation, BITS Pilani (Goa), KLE Society’s Institute of Dental Sciences, Triveous, and other clinical and industrial partners, with guidance from the Oral Cancer Task Force. Aarogya Aarohan is a point-of-care, AI-empowered, white-light, mobile phone-based tool for the early detection of oral potentially malignant disorders (OPMD) and oral cancers.