India a hotbed of AI innovation in healthcare, agriculture: Gates CEO

Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman lauds India as a "hotbed of AI innovation," highlighting advancements in healthcare diagnostics and agriculture. He noted the potential to scale these affordable, India-led AI models to other developing nations.

India is "one of the hotbeds of innovation in AI", with artificial intelligence being applied in areas including healthcare and agriculture, Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman said on Tuesday, citing opportunities to develop and scale such solutions in India and other developing countries.

"Because India is one of the hotbeds of innovation in AI. Whether it's AI innovations around diagnostics," Suzman told ANI in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of AVPN conference 2026 held in the national capital.

AI Innovations in Healthcare

Suzman said the Gates Foundation is exploring AI applications in healthcare, including low-cost sensors that can assist hospitals in monitoring pregnant women and diagnosing tuberculosis.

"We have been developing low-cost sensors that can help in hospitals. That can actually help look at, say, pregnant mothers or do diagnoses around tuberculosis," he said.

He said AI algorithms can support diagnostic systems that offer accuracy comparable to that available at expensive hospitals.

"Using AI algorithms that give you the same accuracy. As if you're in a very expensive hospital in the United States," Suzman said.

The foundation is also working on AI-enabled treatment algorithms that can help community healthcare workers make better decisions when treating children with fever.

"We're seeing new treatment algorithms. That actually help community healthcare workers make better decisions about how to treat if a child comes in with a fever," he said.

AI in Agriculture: A New Frontier

He said agriculture was another area where the foundation was seeing promising applications of AI."But even more exciting has been some of the work in agriculture," he said.

The foundation initially worked at the state level, including in Maharashtra, and is now working with the Department of Agriculture on scaling up an interactive application for smallholder farmers, he said: The application is designed to speak in local languages and provide access to weather forecasting, soil-health information and guidance on fertilisers and seeds, as well as government support, extension services and subsidies.

"It speaks in local languages. That is able to give access to best-in-class weather forecasting," Suzman said.

He said the application could help farmers access information and services needed to make decisions on farming inputs and government support.

"This is an area where India again is leading the world," Suzman said.

Scaling Globally and Ensuring Affordability

The Gates Foundation also aims to take successful AI models developed in India to other developing regions.

"We hope to both achieve scale here in India with AI. But again take many of those models and help them work in countries across the continent of Africa," Suzman said.

Suzman said affordability remained a key challenge in deploying innovations at scale.

"We need to drive down the cost as much as possible to make this affordable," he said.

Citing tuberculosis diagnostics, he said the foundation had recently worked with an Indian partner to bring the cost of a diagnostic test to less than USD 2, compared with a historical cost of about USD 20.

The Gates Foundation (formerly known as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) is one of the largest private philanthropic organisations in the world. It was launched in 2000 by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. (ANI)

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