Ahmedabad's Hitcon AI in Healthcare Declaration: What It Means for Care Delivery
At Vigyan Bhavan in Science City, Ahmedabad, healthcare leaders and clinicians came together to launch the Ahmedabad Hitcon AI in Healthcare Declaration during Hospex 2026. Representatives from several medical bodies, including the Ahmedabad Medical Association, aligned on a clear goal: use AI responsibly, ethically, and with patients at the center.
The message was simple-bring AI into healthcare without losing clinical judgment, safety, or trust.
The core commitments
- Responsible, ethical AI with patient safety and clinician oversight
- Interoperability aligned with ABDM standards
- Clinician-centric adoption that complements, not replaces, medical expertise
- Evidence-based implementation and outcome tracking
- Access beyond metros-enable Tier II and III cities
- Public-private collaboration for scale and accountability
Why this matters now
Speakers covered AI's role across the care continuum-from disease prediction to database management. Dr Rajendra Pratap Gupta outlined five stages of AI evolution and noted that systems are shifting from responsive tools to more autonomous capabilities. His ask to the medical community: don't resist the shift-lead it. Be the innovators who set the guardrails.
Issues raised by participants
- Quality and representativeness of training data
- Barriers to large-scale adoption across diverse settings
- AI ethics in medico-legal contexts and accountability frameworks
What healthcare leaders can do next
- Set up an AI governance group with clinical, IT, legal, and patient safety voices.
- Map your current systems to ABDM identifiers and data exchange specs; plan for phased interoperability.
- Pilot AI where evidence is strongest (triage support, imaging prioritization, coding/records, forecasting) and track outcomes.
- Audit datasets for bias, provenance, and consent; document data lineage.
- Train clinicians on model limits, uncertainty, and escalation paths; keep humans in the loop.
- Engage medico-legal counsel early; define accountability and incident response.
- Design for lower-resource sites-offline modes, simpler workflows, and clear SOPs for Tier II/III rollout.
- Structure partnerships with vendors and public programs around measurable clinical value and safety.
Helpful references
Learn more and build capability
The declaration sets a clear direction: adopt AI that is interoperable, clinician-led, and backed by evidence. If we keep patients first and measure what matters, AI can help lighten workload, improve access, and raise the quality of care-across Ahmedabad and beyond.
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