Emerging technologies for dignified health care
This article is authored by Dr Rashmi Ardey, director, Programme (Health), Smile Foundation.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic add-on to health care. It is becoming a core enabler of access, quality, and dignity, shaping how patients interact with health systems and how health workers deliver care. For India, the opportunity is both practical and moral. With a large population of people with disabilities, a rapidly ageing demographic, and persistent rural-urban gaps, AI offers a chance to address long-standing inequities through scale and intelligent design.
Recent assessments underline this shift. The WHO’s 2024 landscape report on digital health equity notes that emerging technologies can expand coverage in low-resource settings when inclusivity is built into datasets and design. The World Bank’s 2025 Global Disability and Development Report adds that millions in low and middle-income countries still face preventable barriers in accessing essential services. This global context makes India’s investments in digital health infrastructure timely and significant.
Debates on AI often focus on efficiency and automation, but in a diverse country like India, the more important question is how AI can enhance dignity. For those who face daily frictions while accessing care, small improvements can transform the patient experience.
AI-enabled screening can reduce waiting times for persons with disabilities. Voice-based navigation can help visually impaired patients move through hospitals independently. Predictive analytics can assist elderly patients by alerting caregivers before a health concern escalates. Remote monitoring can reduce the travel burden for patients in remote areas who often rely on others for mobility.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s 2024 report on AI and assistive technologies highlights that accessible design increases autonomy and reduces care dependency for vulnerable populations. India can strengthen this by promoting multilingual interfaces, offline-friendly systems, and culturally relevant datasets across its digital health initiatives.
The government has laid a strong foundation through the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, the IndiaAI Mission, and digital public infrastructure. However, the UNDP Digital Development Outlook 2025 stresses that countries succeed most when innovation is shared across sectors and when public systems act as enablers.
India’s private sector is developing accessible tools in diagnostics, speech recognition, teleconsultation, and portable devices. Startups working on Indian language AI or low-cost imaging tools can scale rapidly when integrated with digital public goods. Nonprofits add another essential dimension. Their long-term presence in communities allows them to understand behavioural barriers, gender dynamics, and trust factors that determine whether a tool is adopted. Their involvement ensures AI reflects ground realities and not only laboratory thinking.
A collaborative model can emerge through open innovation sandboxes, shared anonymised datasets, research partnerships, and state level health innovation hubs. India has successfully piloted such models in other sectors, demonstrating readiness for similar approaches in health care.
The health workforce will largely determine whether accessibility improving technologies succeed. Nurses, frontline workers, rehabilitation professionals, and primary care doctors need practical training in using AI tools, digital case management, and patient-centred applications.
The International Labour Organisation’s 2025 Global Skills Report warns that rapid digitalisation may exclude workers unless deliberate skilling pathways are created. India’s skilling missions, public health institutes, and medical colleges can integrate short courses on AI literacy, ethical use, and accessibility-oriented care. Nonprofits and EdTech organisations can help scale this effort through micro-learning modules, regional language content, and simulation-based training
For AI to enhance dignity, trust is essential. Patients should know how their data is used and who is accountable. The WHO’s 2024 Responsible AI in Health Implementation Guidance calls for strong oversight mechanisms, regular model audits, and community feedback loops. India’s expanding digital health standards and data protection rules form a strong base, but long-term success will depend on shared responsibility among developers, hospitals, civil society organisations, and regulators. Transparent and explainable systems will be central to building public confidence.
India has the ambition, scale, and digital infrastructure to demonstrate how AI can deliver not only better health care but more dignified healthcare. The path forward lies in collaboration. Government systems can provide direction, private innovators can bring technological depth, nonprofits can ensure last-mile relevance, and academia can guide ethical adoption. If these actors work together, AI can strengthen autonomy, expand inclusion, and uphold every individual’s right to accessible and dignified care.
This article is authored by Dr Rashmi Ardey, director, Programme (Health), Smile Foundation.
