From an AIIMS research pilot to clinical decision support used across India
How ClinAlly and Pragmatiq turned published cardiovascular research into AI-enabled software that hospitals and EMR vendors integrate in about a week.
The challenge
Diabetes, hypertension and other non-communicable diseases are among India’s largest health burdens. The clinical guidelines exist, but care on the ground is uneven. Doctors in busy outpatient clinics have minutes per patient, and in many rural centres nurses and community health workers manage patients without a specialist nearby.
The question was not what good care looks like. It was how to put that guidance in front of a clinician at the moment a decision is made, inside the systems they already use.
The evidence
Researchers at AIIMS New Delhi and the Centre for Chronic Disease Control developed a clinical decision support system and tested it in the mPower Heart project, in community health centres in Himachal Pradesh. The results were published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
Research ends with a paper. A product has to work on a busy Monday morning, in someone else’s hospital system.
The approach
- Fit into existing workflows. The CDSS connects to a hospital’s existing EMR or hospital information system through APIs.
- Keep clinical logic explainable. Recommendations follow evidence-based protocols that clinicians can trust and audit.
- Work with national infrastructure. Integration with India’s digital health stack, including ABHA health IDs and ABDM interoperability.
What was built
- i-CDSS: AI-enabled clinical decision support that integrates into an EMR or HMIS in about seven days.
- mPower Health: a practice app giving doctors evidence-based treatment protocols, risk stratification and digital prescriptions.
- ai.m Healthy: a free personal health app built on the ABHA health ID.
- ABDM connectors: helping hospitals meet national interoperability milestones.
The results
ClinAlly is integrated with 10+ public and private healthcare software providers and covers 20+ conditions. It is an official technology partner of the National Health Authority under ABDM and collaborates with the International Diabetes Federation. It was selected in the Government of Andhra Pradesh’s MedTech Innovation Challenge after a live hospital pilot, and presented at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi.
What we carried into other sectors
Explainable rule engines, integration with systems we don’t control, and consent-based data sharing. The same patterns now shape our work in education and agriculture.
Sources: clinally.com; Ajay VS et al., Journal of the American Heart Association, 2016; Entrepreneur One Magazine, April 2025.