India’s AI healthcare push accelerates but clinical adoption remains limited

The IndiaAI Mission has approximately $1.25b in funding.

India’s healthcare infrastructure is becoming artificial intelligence (AI)-ready, driven by government initiatives, electronic medical record (EMR) penetration, private capital, and clinician acceptance.

According to a Bain & Company report, the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) is advancing clinical AI by enabling patient records to be stored and shared across providers and insurers.

Approved in 2024, the IndiaAI Mission has approximately $1.25b in funding to back India-specific data sets and models such as BharatGen and Bhashini.

Additionally, EMR use in Indian hospitals has risen from 18% in 2018 to about 35% today.

“This growth is concentrated in large urban hospital chains, whilst most small- and mid-sized hospitals still document on paper,” the report said.

However, India’s EMR penetration remains behind the United States and the United Kingdom, where adoption is above 90%.

On the funding side, the private-sector investment remains key to enabling large-scale AI deployment.

The report cited that Reliance, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have together committed over $175b to AI and data centre infrastructure in India over the next seven to eight years.

In 2023 to 2024, private equity groups invested around $1.4b in single-speciality providers alone.

These big tech companies focused on infrastructure and data, whilst venture capital and private equity firms invested US$6.6b in AI applications over the past 10 years.

In line with this, India is now the second-largest market in Asia-Pacific by number of AI start-ups, with close to 2,900 AI start-ups.

Moreover, the country has one of the world’s strongest AI talent bases, with skill penetration around three times the global average—currently oriented toward foreign markets.

“Therefore, India’s AI trajectory may depend on how talent is applied to local priorities, including India’s vernacular languages and healthcare delivery,” Bain added.

Given that the truest measure of AI readiness is patient impact, the report said AI in Indian healthcare remains largely assistive today.

“It is used to draft and summarise documentation and support clinicians, but it rarely operates independently.”

Bain explained that India’s national regulatory authority for pharmaceuticals and medical devices, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), issued draft guidance on medical-device software in October 2025; however, it has not yet clearly addressed adaptive and autonomous systems.