CDSCO-IndiaAI Health Innovation Acceleration Hackathon
This initiative is a collaborative effort between IndiaAI (under the Ministry of Electronics and IT) and the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO). Its primary goal is to modernize India’s drug and medical device regulatory framework using Artificial Intelligence.
Bridging the Gap in Medical Innovation
Currently, the CDSCO—the body responsible for approving new medicines and clinical trials in India—is overwhelmed by a massive volume of manual, document-heavy submissions. This manual process acts as a bottleneck, delaying the entry of life-saving drugs and medical devices into the Indian market.
This hackathon is a call to India’s tech community to build an AI-driven regulatory engine that can automate these workflows, making approvals faster, more consistent, and highly secure.
Core Challenges (The Problem Statement)
Participants are tasked with building an end-to-end solution that integrates with existing government portals (SUGAM and MD Online) to perform four critical functions:
- Data Anonymization: Automatically detecting and masking Personally Identifiable Information (PII) to comply with the DPDP Act 2023.
- Document Summarization: Turning massive regulatory filings and “Serious Adverse Event” (SAE) narratives into concise, standardized summaries for human reviewers.
- Completeness & Classification: Scanning forms for missing data and automatically triaging cases based on severity (e.g., classifying medical incidents by level of risk).
- Comparison & Reporting: Detecting changes between different versions of a document and generating formal reports from unstructured inspection notes.
Key Details at a Glance
- Total Prize Pool: ₹85 Lakhs.
- 1st Prize: ₹10 Lakhs + a potential ₹50 Lakhs work contract for one year to deploy the solution.
- 2nd & 3rd Prize: ₹7 Lakhs and ₹3 Lakhs respectively.
- Special Prize: ₹5 Lakhs specifically for an all-women team.
- Timeline: * Launched: March 19, 2026.
- Application Deadline: April 17, 2026.
- Structure:
- Stage 1 (Virtual): A 45-day virtual period to build the initial solution.
- Stage 2 (On-Premises): The top 10 teams will be invited to the CDSCO office in New Delhi for a 5-day “deep-build” and pilot round.
Who can apply?
The call is open to Indian Startups (DPIIT recognized) and Indian Companies (with at least 51% Indian shareholding). Applicants must demonstrate previous experience in deploying tech solutions and provide proof of their proprietary AI technology.
In short, this is more than just a coding competition; it is a procurement-linked challenge where the winner isn’t just getting a trophy, but a seat at the table to help digitize India’s national healthcare regulatory infrastructure.
Competition Guideline
The Competition Guideline Document (often referred to as the “Draft Schema” or “Submission Guidelines”) is the technical and procedural bible for this hackathon. It transitions the call from a high-level concept to a concrete engineering project.
Key Highlights of the Guidelines
The guidelines detail exactly how the “Regulatory Engine” should be built and judged. Here are the most critical sections:
- Technical Compliance: Solutions must integrate with the SUGAM (Drugs) and MD Online (Medical Devices) portals. They are expected to use advanced NLP for de-identification (pseudonymization) and irreversible anonymization, ensuring strict compliance with the DPDP Act 2023 and ICMR guidelines.
- The Development Environment: Participants are encouraged to use the AIKosh Portal. This platform provides a “unified hub” with datasets, models, and an AI sandbox. Interestingly, it offers access to AIRAWAT (India’s AI supercomputer) resources, including A100 GPUs for intensive model training.
- Source Code & GitHub: A mandatory requirement is the creation of a GitHub repository. The Team Leader must submit this link during application. Crucially, any edits made to the code after the submission deadline will result in immediate disqualification.
- The 5-Day “Deep-Build”: For those who make it to Stage 2, the guidelines specify an on-premises round at the CDSCO office in New Delhi. This is a pilot phase where the top 10 teams refine their models using real-world (but controlled) regulatory data to prove efficacy.
Access the Official Document
You can find the detailed procedural and technical schema via the link below:
Official IndiaAI-CDSCO Hackathon Guideline Document (PDF)
Note: It is highly recommended to read the Annexure II (Application Form) section within this document, as it outlines the specific architecture details (Project Proposal) you need to provide during the initial sign-up.
Source of the Announcement :
https://aikosh.indiaai.gov.in/home/competitions/details/fad61a56-c8f7-4bb4-9510-00e0b696c6f1
