The 3rd Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) Healthcare Summit 2026 was held on 22 August 2026 at IIMA in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, on the theme Advancing AI in Healthcare. Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare and Chemicals and Fertilisers Anupriya Patel addressed the summit and called for India to move from being the Pharmacy of the World to becoming the Laboratory of the World through research and innovation. The event also saw the launch of the India Pharma Archives, a public digital platform built by the IIMA Archives and the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA), and the release of the book From Labs to Jabs on India’s COVID-19 vaccine journey.
What Was the IIMA Healthcare Summit 2026?
The IIMA Healthcare Summit is a flagship healthcare forum organised by the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA). The 3rd edition in 2026 was organised by IIMA’s Centre for Management of Health Services (CMHS) and the Alumni and External Relations Office, in collaboration with the IIMA Healthcare Alumni Special Interest Group (ASIG) and the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA).
The 2026 summit was held at the IIMA campus in Ahmedabad and brought together more than 500 participants, including policymakers, industry leaders, healthcare professionals, researchers, academicians, technologists and startup founders. The theme Advancing AI in Healthcare was aligned with the Government of India’s IndiaAI Mission and the broader vision of a healthy and developed India by 2047 (Viksit Bharat 2047).
Key dignitaries present included Punya Salila Srivastava, Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Manoj Joshi, Secretary, Department of Pharmaceuticals, Rajeev Raghuvanshi, Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), Sunil Barnwal, Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Authority (NHA), and Pankaj Patel, Chairperson of the IIMA Board of Governors and Chairperson of Zydus Lifesciences. Anupriya Patel addressed the inaugural session as chief guest.
The programme included panel discussions on AI in Indian Healthcare, Policy Imperatives for India at 2047, Reimagining Healthcare Value Chain and Talent, How AI is Reshaping Diagnostics, Pharma and Care Delivery, a fireside chat on Building AI-ready Healthcare Organisations with IPA President Sharvil Patel and Metropolis Healthcare Executive Chairperson Ameera Shah, and a Startup Showcase featuring AI-led solutions for diagnostics, drug discovery and care delivery.
What Is IIMA?
The Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) was established on 11 December 1961 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, as a collaboration between the Government of India, the Government of Gujarat, Ahmedabad industrialists, the Ford Foundation, and Harvard Business School. The institute was founded with the support of physicist Dr Vikram Sarabhai and industrialist Kasturbhai Lalbhai, with Ravi J. Matthai serving as its first full-time Director. It was declared an Institute of National Importance under the Indian Institutes of Management Act, 2017. The IIMA Archives, launched in November 2017 and housed in the Vikram Sarabhai Library, preserves the institutional and business history of the institute. Its motto is Vidya Vinayogad Vikasa (Progress Through the Application of Knowledge).
Why Does Advancing AI in Healthcare Matter for India?
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, refers to computer systems that can learn from data, recognise patterns and support decision making. In healthcare, AI is used for tasks such as drug discovery, medical imaging, early disease prediction, clinical decision support, disease surveillance and personalised treatment. AI does not replace doctors, it helps them by processing large amounts of information quickly and accurately.
At the summit, Anupriya Patel described AI as a force multiplier in healthcare management and delivery. For a country with a large and diverse population and wide geographical gaps in access, AI can help ensure that every patient receives the right treatment at the right time, even in remote areas. She also stressed that AI adoption must be safe, responsible and human centred, with strong safeguards for patient privacy, and that AI must complement, not replace, human clinical judgement.
Patel noted that Indian pharmaceutical companies are already using AI to accelerate drug discovery and shorten early stages of identifying potential compounds. She called for a national AI ecosystem where government, industry, academia, healthcare providers, technology companies and startups collaborate across the full AI lifecycle, from identifying a problem and building a solution to validation, implementation, monitoring outcomes and scaling successful applications for universal health coverage.
The government’s existing initiatives highlighted at the summit show how this vision is being put into practice. The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) is a national digital health backbone that can support AI use cases such as screening programmes, clinical decision support systems, disease surveillance, risk prediction, remote monitoring and personalised follow-up. eSanjeevani, the national telemedicine platform, is already testing AI tools such as a Clinical Decision Support System. MadhuNetrAI, an AI based eye screening tool developed in Madhya Pradesh for diabetic retinopathy detection, was cited as an operational example of AI in public health delivery.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has designated AIIMS New Delhi, PGIMER Chandigarh and AIIMS Rishikesh as Centres of Excellence for AI to develop and adopt AI solutions for healthcare. A separate Centre of Excellence for AI in Healthcare at IISc Bengaluru has also been created with support from the Ministry of Education. The IndiaAI Mission, approved by the Cabinet in March 2024 with an outlay of ₹10,371.92 crore over five years, is implemented by IndiaAI, a division under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). It aims to make AI work for India by expanding compute infrastructure to more than 38,000 GPUs by late 2025, providing high quality datasets through AIKosh, and supporting startups and application development. AIKosh by late 2025 had more than 5,500 datasets and 251 AI models across 20 sectors.
The Promotion of Research and Innovation in Pharma-MedTech Sector (PRIP) Scheme is a ₹5,000 crore scheme of the Department of Pharmaceuticals, Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers, launched in 2023, to shift Indian pharma and MedTech from cost based to innovation led growth. It has two parts, ₹700 crore for Centres of Excellence at seven National Institutes of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPERs) and ₹4,250 crore for direct support to industry projects, including startups and MSMEs. Patel also cited the National Biopharma Mission and the Biopharma SHAKTI Mission of ₹10,000 crore announced in the Union Budget to strengthen biologics, biosimilars, skilled manpower and clinical trial capacity.
Pankaj Patel, speaking at the summit, said AI can improve the entire value chain, from identifying drug candidates and designing clinical trials to patient recruitment and detecting failures early, but it must be deployed ethically and effectively.
From Pharmacy of the World to Laboratory of the World
India is widely called the Pharmacy of the World because it is the third largest producer of pharmaceuticals by volume globally and one of the largest exporters of generic medicines and vaccines. Indian medicines reach more than 200 countries, India supplies nearly 50 percent of generic prescriptions in the United States and about 25 percent of medicines dispensed in the United Kingdom, and accounts for a large share of global antiretroviral drugs for HIV treatment.
The idea of becoming the Laboratory of the World was the central call at the summit. It means moving beyond large scale generic manufacturing of medicines discovered elsewhere to original discovery and innovation in India, creating new molecules, biologics, vaccines, diagnostics and medical devices designed in India for global needs. This aligns with the goal that by 2047, the centenary of independence, India should be among the top five global pharmaceutical innovators and deliver 100 new medicines discovered in India.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, India demonstrated scale in both supply and delivery, ensuring medicines and vaccines to more than 200 countries and administering over 2.2 billion vaccine doses domestically. The next step, as outlined by Patel and IPA leaders, is to build on that supply strength with stronger research, intellectual property creation and clinical research capacity, so that future global health solutions are not only made in India but also discovered in India.
What Is the India Pharma Archives?
A major highlight of the summit was the launch of the India Pharma Archives, the first publicly accessible digital archive documenting 125 years of India’s pharmaceutical industry. The platform is available at indiapharmaarchives.com and was launched by Anupriya Patel in the presence of senior officials and industry leaders.
How Was It Built and What Does It Contain?
The archive is a joint initiative of the IIMA Archives (Vikram Sarabhai Library, IIMA) and the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA), supported by heritage management partner Past Perfect Heritage Management LLP. It builds on the landmark coffee table book The Alchemy of Cure, released earlier in 2026, which first brought together the broad narrative of the industry’s evolution.
The archive covers the period 1901 to 2025 and is designed as a living and continuously evolving repository, not a static gallery. Its current holdings include:
| Content Type | Details |
|---|---|
| Video stories | More than 250 video narratives |
| Oral histories | Interviews with more than 30 first generation founders and industry leaders, many recorded for the first time |
| Documents and resources | Nearly 1,000 documents, including company histories, archival records, timelines and transcripts |
| Historical media | Rare films, footage and photographs from across the pharma ecosystem |
| Company histories | Dedicated histories of leading firms that shaped the sector |
| Novel molecules showcase | Seven novel molecules developed by six Indian companies (Sun Pharma, Glenmark, Torrent, Dr Reddy’s, Ranbaxy and Zydus) as markers of the shift to innovation |
Key features include advanced search tools and thematic timelines that allow students, researchers, policymakers, historians and industry leaders to explore the interplay of science, entrepreneurship and policy that created the modern industry. Oral histories form the heart of the collection, capturing how early entrepreneurs navigated licensing, patent regimes, quality standards and global competition.
IPA President Dr Sharvil Patel, Managing Director of Zydus Lifesciences, said the industry’s story is one of science, entrepreneurship and global impact, and that the archives would also serve as a platform for new ideas and collaborations. IPA Secretary General Sudarshan Jain said the archive safeguards the legacy of innovation for future generations and will act as a rich educational resource that reinforces India’s global leadership.
What Is the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance?
The Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) was founded in August 1999 in Mumbai, Maharashtra, under the leadership of industry veteran Dilip G Shah (1941 to 2019), an IIMA alumnus. It was formed by research based domestic companies including Cipla, Dr Reddy’s, Lupin, Piramal, Ranbaxy and Wockhardt.
Today IPA represents 23 research based national pharmaceutical companies headquartered in Mumbai. Its members account for more than 85 percent of private sector investment in pharmaceutical research and development in India, contribute more than 80 percent of the country’s pharmaceutical exports, and serve about 64 to 65 percent of the domestic market. IPA works closely with government on policy related matters, particularly intellectual property, pricing, quality and trade, and played a notable role in shaping the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2005, including the wording of Section 3(d) to prevent evergreening of patents while protecting genuine innovation. In 2015 it established a dedicated Quality Forum to promote global excellence standards.
Which Book on India’s COVID-19 Vaccine Journey Was Released?
Alongside the archives, the summit saw the release of the book From Labs to Jabs: Scaling Up of COVID-19 Vaccination in India, co-authored by Prof Rajesh Chandwani and Prof Ranjan Kumar Ghosh of IIMA, and Vinita Sindhwani Satija. The book is published by Routledge (Taylor and Francis) and was formally launched at IIMA in 2026.
The title From Labs to Jabs is also published with the subtitle How Agility, Ability and Adaptability Led to the Success of India’s COVID-19 Vaccination Program. It provides a first hand account of how India developed, approved and delivered more than one billion COVID jabs in less than two years, making it the world’s largest vaccination programme by scale.
Based on interactions with key decision makers, the book traces the journey from the formation of national expert groups and vaccine development to regulatory pathways such as rolling reviews that balanced speed with safety. It documents funding mechanisms, cold chain setup and operation, human resource mobilisation, technology platforms such as CoWIN, public communication to address vaccine hesitancy, and facility level management for the final delivery of doses.
The authors argue that the programme succeeded not through centralised command alone but through distributed leadership, where people at different levels were empowered to take context specific decisions. The book presents lessons in adaptive governance, implementation science and crisis management that are relevant beyond the pandemic, linking the experience to India’s future ambition of moving from volume to value leadership in pharmaceuticals by 2047.
Significance and Looking Ahead
The summit linked three priorities that will shape the next phase of India’s health sector.
First, technology adoption at population scale. India already has digital public goods such as ABDM and eSanjeevani. The task now is to move AI from pilots to large scale deployment with clear governance, ethics and privacy safeguards, supported by CoEs at AIIMS institutions and wider access to datasets and computing through the IndiaAI Mission.
Second, innovation led pharmaceutical growth. The PRIP scheme and Biopharma SHAKTI mission, together with stronger industry academia collaboration between NIPERs, IISc, AIIMS and industry, aim to build new research infrastructure, nurture talent and fund discovery projects from early laboratory work to commercialisation. IPA has set a mission to help India discover 100 new medicines by 2047.
Third, institutional memory as a foundation for future innovation. By systematically documenting the last 125 years, the India Pharma Archives gives researchers and entrepreneurs a shared base to learn how policy shifts such as the Indian Patents Act, 1970 (which introduced process patents) and the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2005 (which introduced product patents) shaped industry strategy, and how quality and regulatory upgrades helped Indian firms earn global trust.
Together, these directions support the summit’s core message. If AI is deployed responsibly and innovation ecosystems are funded and governed well, India’s pharma and healthcare story can evolve from reliable global supply to global discovery and invention, while expanding affordable and equitable access at home.
Key Takeaways
- The 3rd IIMA Healthcare Summit 2026 was held on 22 August 2026 at IIMA, Ahmedabad on the theme Advancing AI in Healthcare and was addressed by Union Minister of State Anupriya Patel.
- The summit’s central message was that India should move from being the Pharmacy of the World to becoming the Laboratory of the World by using AI and innovation led growth.
- Anupriya Patel described AI as a force multiplier that must be safe, responsible and human centred and must complement, not replace, human clinical judgement.
- The India Pharma Archives, launched at the summit at indiapharmaarchives.com, is the first publicly accessible digital archive covering 125 years (1901 to 2025) of India’s pharma industry, built by IIMA Archives and the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA).
- The archive currently holds more than 250 video stories, interviews with more than 30 first generation founders and leaders, and nearly 1,000 documents and resources, building on the book The Alchemy of Cure.
- The IPA, founded in August 1999 in Mumbai and representing 23 research based companies, accounts for more than 85 percent of private pharma R and D investment and more than 80 percent of pharma exports.
- The book From Labs to Jabs: Scaling Up of COVID-19 Vaccination in India by Rajesh Chandwani, Vinita Sindhwani Satija and Ranjan Kumar Ghosh, published by Routledge, documents India’s delivery of more than one billion jabs through distributed leadership and adaptive governance.
