IndiaAI, NCG roll out Rs 1 crore grant to fast-track AI solutions in cancer care

The challenge has been jointly launched by IndiaAI Mission and NCG

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has partnered with the National Cancer Grid (NCG) to launch a national grant challenge that aims to develop and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) tools for cancer care.

Winners of the challenge will see their solutions being deployed in real-life scenarios, in hospitals across the country.

Announced under the IndiaAI Mission, the challenge is being jointly run with the NCG which is a network of more than 300 cancer centres coordinated by the Tata Memorial Centre.

The challenge aims to address the bottlenecks across cancer care including early detection, diagnosis, treatment, decision-making and so on, IndiaAI said.

Under the scheme, selected proposals will receive up to Rs 50 lakh in milestone-based grants for solution development, clinical validation, and pilot deployment.

Projects that demonstrate success in hospitals will be eligible for a grant of up to Rs 1 crore.

"IndiaAI – NCG will facilitate a national-level scale-up opportunity for selected pilot winners for up to ten innovators, demonstrating robust clinical, technical, and operational success. These solutions may either be selected for national deployment through IndiaAI-supported initiatives across relevant public health contexts, or scaled across the NCG network of hospitals and affiliated institutions," IndiaAI said.

Apart from financial support, grant winners can also access the NCG hospital network, guidance from AI and healthcare experts and so on.

The challenge targets AI solutions such as --

• Low-cost tools for early detection, including self-screening and voice/image-based apps
• AI-driven analysis of pathology, radiology, and genomics data
• Decision support for oncologists
• Digital tools for symptom monitoring
• AI for hospital workflow optimisation, scheduling, billing, and discharge
• Tools to support clinical trial recruitment
• Privacy-compliant healthcare data management and AI model deployment

Up to 10 proposals will be selected for pilot implementation and will be assessed by a joint panel of experts from MeitY, IndiaAI, NCG, and other healthcare institutions.

The program also mandates that awardees contribute anonymised data to AIKosh, India’s open AI datasets platform, to support future research.