City to turn ‘Digital Wellbeing Capital’

CHENNAI: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras inaugurated an alliance, ‘Digital Wellbeing Alliance’, on Wednesday, to deploy digital technologies with the objective of making Chennai the ‘Digital Wellbeing Capital’ of the World.

It was inaugurated by Dr Ram D Sriram, chief of Software and Systems Division, Information Technology Laboratory, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, US federal government.
IIT will use Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, IoT and Motion Capture Technology to work for the wellbeing of the community, specifically the young workforce and weaker sections of the society, said a press release.

The stakeholders of this alliance are academic institutions, health technology companies, medical device makers, digital health players, medical institutions, corporate firms, government bodies such as NITI Aayog and Certifying/Regulating Agencies.

“There are many issues that only an alliance can solve,” said Prof M Manivannan, Biomedical Engineering Group, Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT Madras, who organised this alliance. “We will brainstorm to identify those issues in this workshop. This alliance is spearheaded by several passionate people, apart from me, including D. Janakiram of IIT Madras, Sridharan Sivan of S10 Health Solutions, Sharmila Devadas of MedioTek Health Systems, and Subbarao of Chola MS Risk.”

The alliance has its own blockchain which is a decentralised platform that enables secure, fast and transparent exchange and usage of medical data with smart contracts. With the blockchain technology, the community end user is at the centre of the digital transformation of healthcare and is empowered with the right of his/her own data.