Koita Centre for Digital Health Marks Another Year of Excellence

The Koita Centre for Digital Health at Ashoka University (KCDH-A) celebrated its Annual Day on August 6, 2025. Now in its third year, the centre was honoured to welcome Ashoka University leadership, KCDH-A collaborators, partners, industry leaders, students and young innovators to reflect on their progress and deliberate on the future of digital health in India. The event featured inspiring keynotes, rapid-fire trainee presentations, and the formal launch of the ‘Responsible AI in Healthcare’ webinar series in partnership with WHO-SEARO.

The proceedings commenced with engaging remarks from Professor Somak Raychaudhury, Vice Chancellor, Ashoka University, and Pramath Raj Sinha, Chairperson, Board of Trustees, Ashoka University, who encouraged everyone to join Ashoka’s vision for health innovation.

Dr Anurag Agrawal, Dean, BioSciences & Health Research, Head, KCDH-A, Ashoka University, recapped the journey of KCDH-A, and Rizwan Koita, Co-Founder, Koita Foundation, delivered an uplifting message about the role of donors and partners in this work. We also had a wonderful keynote on responsible AI in global health from Dr Karthik Adapa, WHO-SEARO, and an invaluable presentation by Nitin Aggarwal, ZS Associates, on digital health transformation from an industry perspective.

The day was highlighted by the presentations of KCDH-A Research Assistants. Mihir Chaturvedi introduced a physician-oriented, bias-aware AI-based system for ICU mortality prediction at the early phase of ICU admission. Suhani Daruka shared the impact of immune fatigue during the resolution phase of ARDS.

Mayukh Nair described the infrastructure of the world’s first Ashoka Cohort for Health and Wellbeing. Aishwarya Nagdev talked about community-created digital health interventions that could help achieve the WHO definition of ‘Health for All’. Gautam Ahuja presented a conversational mHealth app using language models and a rule-based model to improve the diagnosis of abdominal pain in OPD.

The event concluded with the official launch of the webinar series on ‘Responsible AI in Healthcare’ in collaboration with WHO-SEARO. This monthly series seeks to share knowledge about how AI can transform diversity in the health systems of Southeast Asia. The webinar will take place on the first Wednesday of every month.

The centre expressed gratitude to all the speakers, partners, and attendees for their valued contributions and offered a special thanks to the organising team for making the KCDH-A Annual Day 2025 a success.