National Health Authority (NHA) Organises Federated Intelligence Hackathon at IIT Kanpur

Key facts

• The National Health Authority (NHA), in collaboration with the ICMR–National Institute for Research in Digital Health and Data Science (ICMR-NIRDHDS) and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, organised the Federated Intelligence Hackathon for Healthcare.
• The national-level initiative was held at the IIT Kanpur campus to advance secure and scalable Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions for India's healthcare ecosystem.
• The event featured a Hackathon Week from 19 to 23 January 2026, followed by a two-day on-site programme beginning on 23 January 2026.
• The hackathon received a total of 191 registrations, comprising 76 individual participants and 115 teams from health-tech start-ups, clinicians, and researchers.
• The competition carries a total prize pool of ₹12 lakh, with winners announced during the valedictory sessions on 24 January 2026.
• The programme integrated NHA’s digital health governance through the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) with the clinical research expertise of ICMR-NIRDHDS.
• Technical sessions covered Health Technology Assessment (HTA), traditional machine learning, and AI use cases in ophthalmology, bone age detection, and computational pathology.
• Participating organisations and experts included representatives from NITI Aayog, Samsung India, Google Health AI, CoRover.ai, ArtPark@IISc, and the Wadhwani Foundation.