WHO SEARO & LEHS Collaborate Through Wadhwani AI to Advance Responsible AI in Public Health

The partnership is intended to generate and share evidence and practical implementation insights on the use of AI in public health programmes, strengthen related capacity, and inform other Member States of the WHO South-East Asia Region.

The World Health Organization's South-East Asia Regional Office (WHO SEARO) and the Lords Education and Health Society (LEHS), through its Wadhwani AI initiative, have signed a Project Collaboration Agreement (PCA) to advance the responsible design, evaluation, and use of AI in India's public health system.

The partnership is intended to generate and share evidence and practical implementation insights on the use of AI in public health programmes, strengthen related capacity, and inform other Member States of the WHO South-East Asia Region.

The agreement seeks to address the need for evidence on the safety and effectiveness of AI solutions in real-world settings, alongside appropriate governance frameworks and safeguards for equity, privacy and human rights.

Key areas of collaboration

Under the agreement, WHO SEARO and LEHS, through Wadhwani AI, will focus on generating evidence on AI applications in public health programmes through technical briefs, case studies and evaluation reports covering their design, validation, safety, effectiveness and operational feasibility.

The initiative will also include documenting pathways for integration into public health systems by identifying the enablers of and barriers to institutional adoption, workflow integration and the integration of AI into government digital health platforms, where requested by the responsible government authorities.

Another area of focus will be documenting implementation practices across the AI lifecycle, covering applications in diagnostics and screening, risk stratification, disease tracking and modelling, from problem identification and development to validation, deployment, monitoring and evaluation.

In addition, the agreement also aims to strengthen capacity and knowledge sharing through capacity-building materials and knowledge assets for public health programme managers and the health workforce.

Further, evidence and implementation insights will be made available to India and other Member States of the WHO South-East Asia Region to inform decisions on responsible AI adoption in public health.

The initiative builds on WHO SEARO's ongoing work to support digital health system development and responsible AI adoption across its Member States.

The Project Collaboration Agreement will remain in effect for an initial period of two years, from 1 November 2026 to 31 October 2028.

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