New Delhi, Nov 28 (NationPress) In a significant advancement for public health security, India is poised to harness Artificial Intelligence (AI), real-time data analytics, and digital intelligence systems to bolster disease surveillance, as revealed by officials from the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) on Friday.

This transformative initiative aims to markedly improve the nation's capability to detect outbreaks prior to their escalation, facilitating quicker decision-making, prompt responses, and proactive containment measures.

“Our objective is to consolidate all existing disease reporting frameworks into a singular surveillance system through the integrated health information portal. We are also aiming to transition from a reactive to a predictive surveillance model,” stated Dr. Ranjan Das, Director of NCDC, in an interview with IANS.

Dr. Das further indicated ongoing collaborations with various ministries and institutions for disease surveillance.

“We will expand our technological efforts in conjunction with multiple ministries and scientific institutions nationwide, including ISRO, the Institute of Science in Bangalore, and several IITs,” he added.

This strategy builds upon the impressive achievements of AI-driven event surveillance systems already operational within the Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP) of the IDSP.

The AI-enhanced tool, Media Scanning and Verification Cell (MSVC), scans millions of online news reports daily in 13 Indian languages, extracting structured health event data, including disease type, location, and scale.

Since 2022, the system has analyzed over 300 million news articles, identifying more than 95,000 unique health-related events—representing a 150% increase in detection capacity compared to manual systems, alongside a 98% decrease in surveillance team workload.

This groundbreaking technology, known as Health Sentinel, functions as a digital watchdog, automatically detecting unusual increases in diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, and other public health threats, which are subsequently verified by experts for accuracy.

“Transitioning from reactive to anticipatory measures—the future of disease surveillance in India is now defined by data-driven, intelligent, and predictive methodologies,” asserted Dr. Das, along with Dr. Himanshu Chauhan, Additional Director (Head of the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP)), during a media discussion.

“This predictive surveillance shift will leverage advanced analytical capabilities to forecast disease patterns and enable interventions even before the initial case is reported, marking a significant advancement in India's pandemic preparedness,” the officials said.

Additionally, reinforcing this transition are the newly formed Metropolitan Surveillance Units (MSUs) under the PM-Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission (PM-ABHIM), which have showcased exceptional real-time surveillance capabilities.

The officials cited a recent case where the MSU in Nagpur swiftly reported suspected cases of paediatric Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) in Chhindwara district, Madhya Pradesh, to the Central Surveillance Unit.

This prompt action facilitated rapid coordination among stakeholders, resulting in an immediate expert response by the National Joint Outbreak Response Team (NJORT), in collaboration with ICMR, NIE, and CDSCO.

“This incident exemplifies the evolving capabilities of India's surveillance ecosystem to swiftly detect unusual clinical trends and instigate early interventions—even within complex urban health environments. This approach also emphasizes the collaborative surveillance focus that IDSP and NCDC are committed to enhancing further,” the officials remarked.