STPI Tech Conclave at IIT BHU Puts AI to Work in Health Care

Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), a science and technology body working under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), held a Tech Conclave on AI for Health and Assistive Technologies together with the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) of IIT (BHU). The venue was the IIT (BHU) campus in Varanasi, and the release on it came out on 18 October 2026. Officials, academics, doctors and founders of start-ups were brought together to work out how artificial intelligence can make health care easier to reach and more inclusive.

Who said what

Shri S. Krishnan, Secretary, MeitY, delivered the keynote address. He held that artificial intelligence can widen access to health care, firm up clinical decision-making and improve the delivery of services, above all for communities that today reach health facilities with difficulty. He pointed to disease screening, medical diagnostics, remote monitoring of intensive care units and AI-assisted surgical planning as uses already within sight, asked that AI teaching be built into every discipline, and recalled the support on offer through the IndiaAI Mission and other MeitY programmes.

STPI from 1991 to the age of AI

Shri Arvind Kumar, Director General of STPI, looked back on three decades of change in the country's technology ecosystem. STPI has helped the IT and ITeS industry grow since 1991, he said, and the same thing can now be done for artificial intelligence through home-grown innovation. Students who once aimed only at a campus placement, he noted, can today become employers themselves. He named STPI's 27 Centres of Entrepreneurship and pressed for translational research, the creation of intellectual property and market access, with start-up ecosystems built up in smaller places and not only in the established technology hubs.

The host institute

Prof. Amit Patra, Director of IIT (BHU), spoke of the institute's work in building its start-up ecosystem through CIIE, and of the need for a settled institutional frame that turns the ideas of students and faculty into working companies. Shri Sumit Mahajan, Chief Executive Officer of the Uttar Pradesh Startup Mission, and Dr Mallika Tiwari of the Department of Oncology, Institute of Medical Sciences, BHU, also addressed the opening session, which began with the lighting of the lamp and welcome remarks by Prof. Manoj Kumar Meshram, Faculty In-Charge of CIIE.

The two panels

The vote of thanks was given by Shri Praveen Kumar Dwivedi, Additional Director and Officer-in-Charge of STPI Lucknow.