GOA: An important brainstorming session on a citizen-centric health delivery ecosystem for universal health coverage using digital healthcare technologies and innovation took place on the second day of the second Health Working Group meeting under the G20 India Presidency.

In his opening remarks at the side event, Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha, Secretary, Ministry of Ayush, emphasised an integrative holistic healthcare model of service delivery through a comprehensive IT backbone for traditional medicine called "Ayush Grid" and by ensuring that Artificial intelligence (AI) in traditional medicine is benchmarked with the guidance and support of UN bodies.

"There is a need to advocate the use of digital tools for not only the efficiency and outcome of the healthcare system but also to maintain medical records, exchange information, and extrapolate the effectiveness of various modalities of healthcare including, but not limited to, pharmaco-therapeutic interventions, traditional medicine based approaches, and other innovations." Kotecha said. "One of the responsibilities of the soon-to-be established WHO Global Centre for Traditional Medicine in India is to work on data analytics and technology in traditional medicine. This will be sufficient for the data and technological infusion into TM in the upcoming years, he said .

The secretary took part in the panel discussion on "Building a Digital Health Ecosystem: Towards Harmonised and Effective Health-Data Governance Frameworks" as well.

The ever-growing and pervasive application of artificial intelligence in healthcare, including traditional medicine, was one of the important aspects of digital health that he discussed.

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