Koita Foundation is proud to share that Mrudula Khedekar, Senior Program Manager, has been recognised at ISQua’s 42nd International Conference in Dublin and won the ISQua Fellowship in Action presentation event.

As one of four Fellows selected from a community of over 2,000 Fellows to present at the Fellowship in Action session, Mrudula presented her work, “Creating a Community of Care: Establishing a Parent Peer Support Network for Pediatric Transplant Families.” The initiative focuses on establishing a peer support network for families navigating paediatric transplantation.

Her presentation was subsequently selected for the Closing Plenary, highlighting how learnings from the ISQua Fellowship can be translated into meaningful action within communities.

Koita Foundation congratulates Mrudula on this well-deserved recognition and for bringing this important work to an international platform.

Koita Foundation has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to collaborate on Digital Health and Healthcare AI.

The collaboration will focus on Digital Health and AI capacity building, validation and generation of real-world evidence for Digital Health and AI solutions, innovation ecosystem development, data repositories and disease registries.

The partnership was signed in the presence of Dr. Rajiv Bahl, Director General, ICMR, and Dr. Mona Duggal, Director, ICMR-National Institute for Research in Digital Health (ICMR-NIRDH). Koita Foundation is grateful to Dr. Bahl and Dr. Duggal for their leadership and for the opportunity to collaborate with ICMR. ICMR's National Institute for Research in Digital Health (NIRDH) has been set up to strengthen capabilities in Digital Health and AI, and to accelerate responsible innovation and adoption at scale across India.

The occasion was also blessed by Dr. Sanghamitra Pati, Additional Director General, ICMR; Prof. Anurag Agrawal, Dean, Biosciences, Ashoka University and Head, Koita Centre for Digital Health at Ashoka University; Prof. Ranjith Padinhateeri, Head, Koita Centre for Digital Health, IIT Bombay; and Dr. Indu Bhushan, Founding CEO, National Health Authority, among other healthcare and Digital Health leaders.

Koita Foundation looks forward to working closely with ICMR and ICMR-NIRDH to strengthen the Digital Health and AI ecosystem and support the translation of innovation into meaningful applications for healthcare in India.

New standards for Radiology Information Systems (RIS) and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) were launched by the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH) at the NABH Patient Safety Conference 2026 in New Delhi on 17 September 2026.

Developed in collaboration with the National Cancer Grid – Koita Centre for Digital Oncology (NCG-KCDO), the standards provide a structured framework for hospitals and healthcare institutions to define their RIS-PACS requirements and evaluate solutions across areas including functional capabilities, technical requirements, interoperability, scalability, security and operational workflows. By establishing a common framework, the standards can support more consistent adoption of digital radiology systems across healthcare settings.

The standards also include oncology-specific requirements, addressing the specialised imaging and information needs of cancer care and supporting the digital transformation of NCG-empanelled centres.

The development of the standards brought together clinical and radiology experts, members of the NCG RIS-PACS Sub-Committee, NABH representatives and industry stakeholders, incorporating clinical, technology, operational and accreditation perspectives.

The launch is an important step towards strengthening standardisation and interoperability in digital radiology, while helping healthcare institutions adopt secure, scalable and connected radiology systems.

Koita Foundation supported this collaborative initiative as part of its commitment to advancing digital health standards and enabling the responsible adoption of technology across healthcare.

The Max Institute of Healthcare Management (MIHM) at the Indian School of Business (ISB) launched a new report, Post-Adoption Value of NABH Digital Health Standards: A Multi-Hospital Assessment in India, at ISB's Hyderabad campus. Ajay Seth, Chairperson, Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), released the report in the presence of Kannan Chakravarthy, Secretary General, Quality Council of India and CEO (I/C), NABH; Rizwan Koita, Chairperson, NABH; Professor Sarang Deo, Executive Director, MIHM, ISB; and Professor Sandeep Rath, Assistant Professor of Operations Management, ISB.

The independent study assessed 20 NABH Digital Health Standards (DHS)-certified hospitals across India, drawing on interviews and a survey of 80 hospital leaders. 

Key findings of the study:

• Overall increase in Digital maturity: From 3.42 to 4.35/5.00
• Overall value of NABH DHS to hospitals: 4.62/5.00
• Data privacy and documentation quality: 4.56/5.00
• Operational efficiency: 4.38/5.00
• Interoperability: 4.29/5.00

Hospitals cited improving patient-care quality and operational efficiency as the leading reasons for adopting DHS. The report documented benefits including improved medication safety, better documentation and traceability, faster workflows, stronger governance, and reduced revenue leakage. It also found that staff training, workflow redesign and hospital leadership were key to converting DHS adoption into measurable gains, and pointed to automation, AI-enabled capabilities and deeper integration with the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) as next steps for certified hospitals.

On the occasion of Independence Day, RSSDI and RSSDI-KCDD announced the launch of two digital & AI initiatives aimed at improving access to diabetes care and education in underserved communities across India: the RSSDI Rural Outreach Program (RROP) Digital Platform and RSSDI VISHWAS (Videos to Support Health, Wellness, Awareness & Self-care).

The initiatives were launched by Chief Guest Dr (Shri) Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, and Minister of State for Atomic Energy. The event was also graced by Dr (Shri) Banshi Saboo, Chair, IDF South-East Asia, and Mr Rizwan Koita, Chairperson, NABH and Director, Koita Foundation.

The RROP Digital Platform has been developed to strengthen diabetes screening and management in rural and underserved areas by connecting rural health workers, RSSDI doctors, and programme teams through a unified digital ecosystem. The platform supports field-level screening and real-time programme monitoring, enabling a more structured and technology-enabled approach to last-mile diabetes care.

Complementing this effort, RSSDI VISHWAS, a scalable AI-supported platform helps patients and the public with easy-to-understand educational videos on diabetes self-care, healthy nutrition, and prevention of diabetes-related complications. The content is currently available in English, Hindi, Marathi, and Tamil, with plans to expand to 10 Indian languages, making reliable diabetes education accessible to a wider audience. Learn more - https://www.youtube.com/@rssdi-kcdd 

RSSDI-KCDD continues to advance its mission of strengthening the continuum of diabetes care and improving access to quality care for underserved populations. Learn more about RSSDI-KCDD and its digital & AI initiatives - https://www.rssdi-kcdd.in/

We are delighted to share that Koita Foundation has signed an MoU with TANUH (Translational AI for Networked Universal Healthcare), an AI Centre of Excellence under the Ministry of Education, Government of India, New Delhi, hosted at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). The partnership will focus on research, development, deployment, and testing of AI-driven solutions. 

As part of the collaboration, Koita Foundation, together with the Gates Foundation, will support TANUH in developing evaluation framework for Voice-to-Discrete Data (V2DD) solutions (voice scribing solutions) in India. Most existing voice scribing solutions has been designed around English-speaking settings and hasn't accounted for how healthcare conversations actually happen in India, which is usually multilingual with regional variations. Just as important, there's no standardised way today to measure how these systems perform once you bring them into an Indian setting.

The initiative will focus on building benchmark datasets, clinically relevant evaluation metrics and a testing platform to help assess V2DD solutions across various Indian languages and care settings. We look forward to advancing this work with our partners!

We are pleased to announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Atal Bihari Vajpayee Medical University (ABVMU), Uttar Pradesh, and Koita Foundation to advance Digital Health & AI capacity building for medical and nursing students. ABVMU is affiliated with 68 medical and 300+ nursing and allied health institutions across the state, making it the largest medical university in the country.

As part of the MoU, ABVMU will introduce the Digital Health Foundation Course (DHFC) for medical students and the Digital Health Foundation Course for Nursing (DHFC-N) for nursing students, strengthening Digital Health & AI competencies among future doctors and nurses so they're equipped to leverage digital technologies in clinical practice and healthcare delivery.

Rizwan Koita, co-founder of Koita Foundation, sat down with The Indian Express to talk about why digital and AI adoption in healthcare has been so much harder than in sectors like banking or e-commerce — and what it will actually take to implement and take advantage of digital and AI tools in healthcare. 
 
Mr Koita spoke about the four dimensions India needs to get right: building digital and AI tools designed for Indian realities, supporting hospitals in evaluating and purchasing digital and AI solutions, incorporating digital health & AI in medical education, and developing robust digital and AI standards and regulation for India. The conversation also covered KF's Centres of Excellence in partnership with IIT Bombay, Ashoka University, National Cancer Grid (Cancer), RSSDI (Diabetes) and FOGSI (Maternal healthcare) - and how they align with the four dimensions. 

Koita Foundation is proud to support "What does it take to embed AI in government systems?", the first article in an 8-part series with India Development Review (IDR) exploring how AI is being built and deployed for social impact in India.

This piece features Adalat AI, VOPA, and Civis, three nonprofits working with India's judiciary, education, and policy system, respectively and sharing on-ground lessons on data trust, human oversight, and what it really takes to embed AI within public institutions rather than just build a product. The series will continue to explore the partnerships, funding, and systems needed to make AI work for the social sector.

The first half of 2026 has been a period of momentum across all our Centres & programmes, and we are excited to share some of the highlights with you. In Digital Health, we contributed to SAHI, India's first national AI-in-healthcare strategy, while NCG-KCDO's CATCH Grant, RSSDI-KCDD's new IIT Bombay centre, and FOGSI-KCDM's Digital Health Champions awards deepened our impact on the ground. In the social sector, at the Koita Foundation Tech Awards event, we awarded 7 NGOs for their AI solutions which were creating impact on the ground, with some of them working closely within government systems. We were delighted that the Maharashtra Chief Minister launched Paani Foundation's Smart Sheti App, reaching 3.5 lakh farmers part of the Satyamev Jayate Farmer Cup 2026 across 351 talukas of Maharashtra.