AI summit: Health, education casebooks prove AI is not just promise

In the cacophony of international summits, success is often measured in decibels—the applause following a keynote, the frenetic energy of panel discussions, and the soundbites that flood social media feeds. The India AI Impact Summit 2026 was no exception. The halls of New Delhi buzzed with high-level deliberations on safety protocols, regulatory frameworks, and the philosophical trajectory of artificial general intelligence. Yet, amidst the noise of these macro-level debates, the Summit’s most consequential deliverable was quietly uploaded to a server, under the overcast of the flashier announcements.

I am referring to the launch of the Health and Education AI Impact Casebooks. While they lacked the cinematic allure of a live tech demo, these two documents represent a tectonic shift in the global AI narrative. For the first time, we are moving past the “promise” of AI to the “proof” of AI in the two sectors that most directly define human potential.

Developed by the IndiaAI Mission in collaboration with sector heavyweights—the World Health Organization (WHO), the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the Central Square Foundation, and the EkStep Foundation—these compendiums showcase over 60 deployed solutions. They are not theoretical whitepapers; they are operating manuals for the Global South. By curating concrete innovations, the Government of India has subtly pivoted the conversation from “what AI might do” to “what AI is already doing” to bridge the gap in doctor-patient ratios and teacher-student interactions.

The pulse of progress: AI as a public health instrument

The Health Casebook, a collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoH&FW) and WHO, challenges the industry’s obsession with futuristic biology by focusing on immediate, scalable impact. It features 24 distinct interventions organised into domains like Computer Vision and Predictive Analytics, all aimed at achieving Universal Health Coverage in resource-constrained settings.

The true value lies in the details of deployment. Consider Nayanamritham 2.0, a government-led initiative in Kerala that has integrated AI into the State’s chronic eye disease screening program. This is not a pilot lingering in a sandbox; it is a functioning public health instrument democratising access to diabetic retinopathy screening. Similarly, the casebook highlights Cough Against TB, an AI tool strengthening tuberculosis elimination efforts by triaging potential cases through sound analysis.

In Rwanda and Kenya, AI-assisted visual inspection tools are already augmenting human expertise to screen for cervical cancer, addressing the critical shortage of oncologists in rural areas. Closer to home, innovations like AyurVAID D-RISK utilise machine learning for non-invasive diabetes detection, while the Predictive Virtual Cardiac Twin platform allows surgeons to visualise hearts in 3D before making an incision. These cases prove that in the Global South, AI is not a luxury; it is a vital mechanism for equity.

The classroom of tomorrow: Democratising quality education

Parallel to the health narrative is the Education Casebook, developed with the Central Square Foundation and EkStep Foundation. This document presents 36 applications designed to solve the “learning crisis” defined by large class sizes, language diversity, and administrative burdens.

The innovations here are strikingly practical. BharatGen Yojaka stands out as a “human-in-the-loop” AI assessment platform. By automating the evaluation of spoken language—a notoriously time-consuming task for teachers—it enables scalable formative assessment in public schools while retaining teacher oversight. Addressing the content gap, Chimple offers a Generative AI studio that empowers educators to create curriculum-aligned learning games in local languages without needing technical skills, directly tackling the shortage of vernacular educational resources.

For students in India’s Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, the casebook highlights QwiXGenie, an AI tutoring platform for coding and technical skills. It provides the kind of personalised mentorship previously reserved for the elite, ensuring that the geography of a student’s birth does not dictate their participation in the digital economy. Other tools, like PadhAI, use speech recognition to assess oral reading fluency, providing immediate feedback that an overburdened teacher might not have time to give.

A legacy of human capital

The launch of these two casebooks was overshadowed by the noise of the summit, but their signal will last much longer. They represent a maturing of the AI ecosystem, driven by a conviction that technology must solve fundamental development challenges. As the delegates fly home and the panel discussions fade into memory, these PDF files will remain on the hard drives of bureaucrats, innovators, and development officers worldwide. They offer a ready reference for policymakers seeking to strengthen the very foundations of society: how we heal and how we learn. The India AI Impact Summit 2026 may be remembered for its speeches, but its legacy will be defined by these blueprints for human capital.

(Bhanu Potta is presently the Senior Advisor at Birla AI Labs, and the Founding Partner at ZingerLabs.)