The Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), has participated in the Chintan Shivir, a national review of Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) and Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), held at Bhubaneswar, Odisha. The review meeting was organised by the National Health Authority (NHA) and brought together senior officials from the union and state governments, technical institutions, and implementing agencies to review progress and accelerate the adoption of digital health initiatives across the country.
The deliberations were aligned with the national objective of advancing digital health through artificial intelligence (AI)-driven innovation and inclusive language access, with a focus on ensuring that digital health platforms are usable, accessible, and effective across linguistic and geographic boundaries.
A key highlight of the first day of the event was the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the NHA and the DIBD to enable multilingual translation services and AI-powered language support across NHA’s digital health platforms, including AB PM-JAY and ABDM. The collaboration will integrate BHASHINI’s language technologies, including translation application programming interfaces (APIs), speech recognition, and text-to-speech tools, into beneficiary-facing and administrative applications, thereby strengthening last-mile service delivery and enhancing citizen engagement.
Through this partnership, the DIBD will support the NHA in deploying multilingual and voice-enabled solutions across beneficiary-facing and administrative platforms, with provisions for responsible data governance, secure system integration, and continuous improvement of language models through real-world usage and feedback.
Further, chief executive officer (CEO), DIBD, participated in the MoU signing and delivered a presentation on “Advancing Digital Health with AI Innovation and Inclusive Language Access.” He highlighted that as digital health systems scale across the country, the adoption of AI becomes a natural progression. He emphasised that for AI to deliver meaningful public value in a linguistically diverse country like India, it must be multilingual and voice-enabled, ensuring that language does not become a barrier to accessing healthcare services. He further noted that language AI can significantly enhance citizen engagement, grievance redressal mechanisms, clinical documentation, and the overall accessibility of digital public health platforms.
Further, joint secretary, ABDM, highlighted the practical benefits of language AI in healthcare delivery. He noted that AI-enabled tools such as voice-to-text and natural language processing can help address the time constraints faced by doctors by enabling seamless patient–doctor interactions while allowing electronic health records to be created automatically, thereby improving efficiency and strengthening digital health systems.
