India’s National Health Authority (NHA), the agency that runs Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY and the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), has opened talks with health authorities in the United Arab Emirates on possible cooperation in digital health, health data research and healthcare artificial intelligence.

NHA Chief Executive Officer Dr Sunil Kumar Barnwal, accompanied by Soumya Gupta, Consular (Economics and Commerce) at the Embassy of India in Abu Dhabi, met H.E. Safeya Abdulazeez Al Maqtari, Acting Secretary-General and Chief Operating Officer of the UAE Integrative Medicine Council. The delegation also held discussions with Dr Khuloud Abdulla Al-Dhalei, Executive Director of the International Patient Care Sector at the Department of Health Abu Dhabi, on areas of cooperation in digital health and healthcare innovation.

Data, AI guidance and benchmarking on the agenda

The conversations centred on three building blocks of India’s digital health strategy:

• Secure Data Environments (SDEs) for health data-driven research, where approved researchers can work with sensitive data under controlled conditions.
• Strategy for AI in Healthcare (SAHI), India’s guidance framework for deploying AI safely in clinical and public health settings.
• Benchmarking Open Data Platform for Health AI (BODH), which is meant to validate and benchmark healthcare AI models before they are scaled.

Both sides also explored how health data, including genomic data, could be better understood and used within Malaffi, Abu Dhabi’s Health Information Exchange, which connects records across the emirate’s public and private providers.

The meetings were positioned as a platform to exchange views on responsible use of health data, validation of AI tools, and possible joint work on evidence-based digital health solutions, with a focus on where India’s digital public infrastructure and the UAE’s health data systems could complement each other.

India’s health data story, told abroad

The talks followed Dr Barnwal’s participation in an event in Abu Dhabi, where he spoke about India’s experience of using health data to guide policy. He pointed to PM-JAY claims data as a source of insight into treatment patterns, healthcare costs and patient mobility, and to ABDM’s potential to make better use of linked, longitudinal health records.

He also stressed the need for strong data governance, sustainable financing for digital public infrastructure and investment in workforce capacity, and highlighted the role of public-private collaboration and shared platforms such as the National Health Claims Exchange (NHCX) and the Unified Health Interface (UHI).

Why it matters

As countries move from digitising records to using them for research and AI, frameworks for trusted data access and model validation are becoming the new currency of health diplomacy. For India, engagement with the UAE, home to a large Indian diaspora and a major destination for medical travel, offers a chance to showcase ABDM, SAHI and BODH as exportable models, while learning from a mature regional health information exchange. Any formal agreement would need to address cross-border data protection and consent, but the direction is clear: health data governance is now part of India’s international digital public infrastructure agenda.

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