The National Health Authority is planning to allow companies to provide Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies to healthcare providers through the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) as a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution, NHA CEO R.S. Sharma said on February 26. He was speaking at the post-budget webinar on the ABDM, organised by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), where various stakeholders in the health sector posed questions to Sharma and other senior government officials. In response to one such question, Sharma added that AI and ML solutions could allow doctors to get a diagnosis on an anonymised patient record and would allow the (AI/ML) models to learn while simultaneously benefitting stakeholders. This isn't the first time that the use of AI and ML in the ABDM is being discussed — the consultation paper on the Unified Health Interface (a teleconsultation platform of the ABDM) had mentioned the future inclusion of health bots to give health advice to patients. The involvement of AI in healthcare is significant as it is a critical area of life. Besides this, the webinar served as an avenue for various stakeholders to share their concerns regarding the ABDM with the government. Here are some of the key stakeholder issues that shed light on the ABDM's challenges ahead: Incentivising participation in the ABDM "How can we also start thinking of some sort of an incentivisation that will grow this as a platform? This can be organic or inorganic incentivisation as is the case in…
