The IIT Bombay has built the 'Koita Centre for Digital Health' - India's first to focus on propelling academics, research and industry collaboration in digital health - in collaboration with the Koita Foundation, as per reports.

The KCDH will focus on academic and research sectors like clinical applications including electronic patient records and medical imaging, healthcare data management including its privacy and security, healthcare analytics, health AI/ML, consumer health, public health and public policy.

It is offering minor, dual degree, Masters and Doctorate programmes in healthcare informatics and conduct industry/outreach programs for healthcare and industry professionals in digital health to enable them act as 'force-multipliers'. 

The digital health and informatics need cross-functional expertise -- computer science, statistics, artificial intelligence/machine learning, bioinformatics and medicine -- and the KCDH will build strong collaboration with digital health partners like hospitals, medical research institutes and the industry who would also establish joint academic and research programmes stated IIT-B. 

"The KCDH will enable an ecosystem to help address the healthcare challenges that have been so glaringly exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Digital health and informatics need cross-functional expertise," stated IIT-B Director, Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri. 

Rizwan Koita - who is co-Founder and CEO of global healthcare technology company CitiusTech stated, the digital health is critical to improve healthcare at scale, and the KCDH can play a crucial role in improving healthcare in India and the world. 

The KCDH will also actively collaborate with government organizations, healthcare technology companies and NGOs working in the healthcare, even as the world is focusing increasingly on enhancing digital health and informatics, while India launched the National Digital Health Mission in 2020.