India’s education ministry sets up an AI Centre of Excellence for healthcare at IISc

Summary

India’s education ministry has set up AI Centres of Excellence, including a healthcare-focused AI-CoE hosted at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). The significance is less about a single lab opening and more about institutionalizing an applied AI pipeline—research, datasets, talent, and deployment pathways—inside top-tier public institutions. Healthcare is a strategically chosen domain because it’s data-heavy, high-impact, and politically salient, but also constrained by privacy, interoperability, and uneven digitization. The real test will be whether the CoE becomes a production-grade translational engine (tools used in hospitals and public health) rather than another academic program with limited downstream adoption.