IIT Bombay announces the launch of its new Centre for Digital Health

Through donations from two IIT Bombay Alumni, Rekha and Rizwan Koita's Koita FOundation, the institute has set up a Digital Health Centre. IIT Bombay announced the setup of the Koita Centre for Digital Health (KCDH), a one-of-its-kind centre to focus on driving academic programs, research and industry collaboration in Digital Health.

Koita Foundation will work closely with the Centre to help scale its operations. It will further work with Digital Health Partners on joint digital health initiatives like internships and research programs. Koita Foundation can also provide financial support to Digital Healthcare Partners, as part of its overall commitment to Digital Health. In addition, it will help the Centre establish industry relationships with HealthTech and Medical Device companies.

About the Koita Centre for Digital Health (KDCH)

KCDH will offer minor, dual degree, Masters and PhD programs in Healthcare Informatics. It will also conduct industry and outreach programs for healthcare and industry professionals in digital health and enable them to act as force-multipliers. KCDH's academic and research focus areas will include

• clinical applications; including electronic patient records and medical imaging;
• healthcare data management; including healthcare data privacy and security
• healthcare analytics, healthcare AI-ML
• consumer health, public health and public policy.

“The centre will enable an ecosystem that can help address the healthcare challenges, that have been so glaringly exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Digital Health and Informatics need cross-functional expertise,” said Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri, Director, IIT Bombay.

“At KCDH we hope to enable seamless cross-functionality across these streams. We hope this new initiative will open up exciting opportunities for our graduates; including spearheading research, launching startups, and much more,” he further added. “Digital Health is critical to improving healthcare at scale. We are delighted to support IIT Bombay in establishing the Centre, which can play a pivotal role in improving healthcare in India and across the world,” added Rizwan Koita. “We look forward to supporting KCDH establish and drive digital health partnerships and industry collaboration,” he further added.

Rizwan Koita is also the co-founder and CEO of CitiusTech, a global healthcare technology company.

The need for a Centre for Digital Health

IIT Bombay, in a statement, states that improving the quality, accessibility and affordability of healthcare is one of the world's biggest priorities. Digital Health, including healthcare informatics, has a profound impact on the quality of care and efficiency of healthcare delivery. Consequently, there is substantial focus globally on enhancing Digital Health and Informatics. In India too, the launch of the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) in 2020 is expected to drive Digital Health adoption at a national scale.

Digital Health and Informatics need cross-functional expertise - computer science, statistics, AI-ML, bioinformatics, and medicine. Thus, the dedicated centre will actively collaborate with healthcare technology companies, healthcare NGOs and government organizations to establish joint academic and research programs.