Nasscom inks pact with China's I-Campus for healthcare innovation

Apex software industry body Nasscom on Tuesday said it has entered into a strategic collaboration with China's I-Campus to accelerate healthcare innovation and cooperation in life sciences and healthcare sector.

The development is part of Nasscom's ongoing efforts to bolster digital solutions for non-communicable diseases (NCDs), it said.

I-Campus, or the Wuxi International Life Science Innovation Campus, is an innovation incubation platform offering services in research and development, commercialisation and professional services in life sciences industry and has been co-built by the Wuxi municipal government, the Wuxi National High-tech District and Indian bio-pharma company AstraZeneca.

"The collaboration will support healthcare tech start-ups accelerate healthcare innovation and promote international cooperation and development of the life sciences and healthcare industry across the borders," Nasscom said in a statement.

"Both parties will strengthen academic exchanges, establish the mechanism of mutual visits and personnel exchanges, and share development and management experience to promote common objectives," it added.

According to the agreement, senior officials from Nasscom's Center of Excellence (CoE) IoT will visit I-Campus at Wuxi City in Jiangsu province of China to study the set up and governance of the Healthcare IoT Innovation Centre there.

The Centre of Excellence IoT was set upin 2016 as part of the Digital India initiative of theMinistry of Electronics and Information Technology with the objective of aiding innovative start-ups in emerging technologies.

"I-Campus will provide office and activity space for NASSCOM and its identified members companies," the statement said.

Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh said advanced technology adoption in Indian healthcare sector is poised for substantial growth as it continues to emerge as a game-changer in the delivery of quality healthcare services.

"Technological innovations and interventions are crucial to convert today's expensive medical discoveries into affordable solutions," she said.

"Nasscom's collaboration with AstraZeneca (an already existing partnership) is such an effort to further promote digitally-enabled technologies, across regions, so that evidence can be generated, and tech adoption is scaled at speed, both domestically and internationally," Ghosh added.