AB PM-JAY, ABDM Review in Kolkata: West Bengal Is 36th State in Scheme

The National Health Authority (NHA), which works under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, held a two-day National Review Meeting in Kolkata on 5 and 6 November 2026. Senior officials of States and Union Territories took stock of the two flagship programmes NHA runs: Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY), the health assurance scheme, and the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM). The meeting ran to 15 sessions and closed with a shared roadmap for the next phase.

West Bengal's numbers

NHA's Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Sunil Kumar Barnwal, said the next phase must turn wide coverage into better health outcomes, and that money spent on health must show up as better care. West Bengal's Chief Secretary Manoj Kumar Aggarwal stressed that primary healthcare has to be strengthened alongside the financial cover the scheme gives at the hospital stage.

Tools and platforms discussed

• BODH (Benchmarking Open Data Platform for Health AI), presented by TANUH at IISc Bengaluru, tests health AI models on Indian datasets. States were urged to use it before buying AI solutions.
• NHCX (National Health Claims Exchange): its rollout was reviewed, with ABDM-enabled hospital information systems seen as key to faster claims.
• NAFU (National Anti-Fraud Unit) and auto-adjudication of claims had a session of their own.
• Sandbox 2.0, now with agentic AI, completed an ABDM Milestone 1 integration for ABHA creation live during a demonstration.
• NHA's Ambient AI-enabled Voice Scribe turns doctor-patient talk in several Indian languages into clinical records that doctors approve before they are linked to ABHA.

Other takeaways

The Model Digital Health Facility Framework was reviewed along with Tripura's experience of putting it in place. The Health Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Unit (HAAU) presented findings on data quality, and States agreed to set up their own analytics and AI teams. Tamil Nadu shared how it runs both insurance and assurance models of health cover. On cybersecurity, States were told to name dedicated cybersecurity leads and audit their applications and APIs regularly.