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GKNM Hospital Inaugurates Coimbatore's first Centre of Excellence in Healthcare AI

Sep 17, 2026

health-care-ai

Six research projects, with IISc Bengaluru / TANUH, aim to catch breast cancer, diabetes, heart and kidney disease earlier, in Indian patients. Coimbatore, September 2026

GKNM Hospital launched its Centre of Excellence in Healthcare AI, the first such centre established by a hospital in Coimbatore. The Centre has been established in association with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, and TANUH (Translational AI for Networked Universal Healthcare), a health artificial intelligence programme funded by the Ministry of Education, Government of India.

The Centre was inaugurated in a recent event at the GKNM hospital in the presence of Dr. Manoj Murhekar, Director of the ICMR National Institute of Epidemiology, Chennai, who was the chief guest. Along with Dr. Ragupathy Veluswamy, Chief Executive Officer of GKNM Hospital, also among the dignitaries Dr. G. Manoharan, Chief Medical Officer of GKNM Hospital, Dr. Rahul Singh, Chief Operating Officer of TANUH, Dr. K. Mathan, Director of Research of GKNM Hospital and Mrs. Pavithra Ramanath, Principal Research Scientist of GKNM Hospital.

Research first, and carefully.

Dr Ragupathy Veluswamy, Chief Executive Officer, GKNM Hospital, emphasised that these are research studies, not products being put straight into the clinic. Every project is reviewed by the hospital's Institutional Ethics Committee, and patient data will be handled in accordance with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. No tool will be allowed to influence a patient's treatment until it has been prospectively tested and peer-reviewed. Overall, healthcare AI is intended to support the clinician's judgement, never to replace it.

Why this matters to patients

Most of the diseases that shorten life in India - cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and kidney failure — are far more treatable when they are found early. The problem is that early disease is quiet. People feel well, so they do not come in, and by the time they do, the cheapest and kindest treatments are no longer options.

The work of the Centre is aimed squarely at that gap. Each of its six projects asks the same basic question: can a computer, trained carefully on data from Indian patients, help doctors spot serious illness sooner than they can today, using tests that people can actually access?

The six projects, in plain terms

  1. Breast cancer on mammograms. Software will assist radiologists in reading mammograms, with the aim of detecting cancers earlier and more consistently, and making screening practical for far more women than a limited number of specialists can personally read.
  2. Diabetes in pregnancy and after it. Diabetes that appears during pregnancy often returns years later as permanent diabetes. This project aims to identify, early in pregnancy, which women are heading that way — so that both mother and baby can be protected, and the mother can be followed up after delivery rather than lost to the system.
  3. An Indian brain model. Almost all the AI used in brain imaging today was built on Western patients. Along with IISc's brain research centre, GKNM will contribute to building a foundation model on Indian brain data so that future research and care for stroke, dementia and other neurological conditions rests on people who look like our patients.
  4. A photograph of the eye to check the blood vessels. The retina is the one place in the body where blood vessels can be seen directly, without a needle or a scan. This project tests whether a simple retinal photograph can flag serious vascular disease early, sparing patients expensive and invasive tests.
  5. Catching kidney disease before it is too late. Kidney disease is usually silent until a great deal of function is already lost. This project combines a routine ultrasound with ordinary blood tests to see whether failing kidneys can be identified earlier than they are now.
  6. A kidney risk score that works for Indians. A widely used international score predicts who will progress to kidney failure and need dialysis. It was not built for Indian patients. This project checks how well it performs here and corrects it so that patients and families get honest, accurate warnings and time to prepare.