Wednesday, August 12, 2026
I would like to begin by warmly greeting Madame Anuradha Thakur, representative of the Ministry of Finance, together with all the excellencies, distinguished colleagues, and guests present here today.
It is a great honor to welcome Professor Devi Shetty, founder and chairman of NarayanaHealth, and one of the world’s most visionary leaders in healthcare innovation.
This MoU is an institutional partnership between NDB and Narayana Health to ensure that excellence, innovation, efficiency, and affordability can, and must, coexist in healthcare. Signing this MoU today is a milestone for NDB in its priority to promote social inclusion
Professor Devi Shetty founded Narayana Health in 2000. What made him internationally renowned, was his great medical achievements, and above all his willingness to rethink the economic model of healthcare itself. He built that model on scale: standardized processes, highly productive teams, centralized procurement, rigorous clinical protocols, intensive use of technology, disciplined cost management, high procedural volume, and an unwavering focus on clinical outcomes. At the center of this model lies a powerful idea: that quality and low cost do not have to be opposites.
Our partnership comes at a critical moment. Healthcare systems around the world face a fundamental challenge: how to provide better care for more people, more efficiently, and at a sustainable cost. For many countries, this challenge is even greater, given demographic change, growing demand, rapid technological transformation and fiscal constraints — all of which require us to rethink how health systems are designed and managed.
NDB is committed to supporting a transformation in which health infrastructure is an essential pillar of sustainable development, social inclusion, and human development. But the healthcare infrastructure of the future cannot simply mean more hospitals — it must mean smarter hospitals, and smarter healthcare systems.
This is precisely where our partnership with Narayana Health becomes so important.
At the center of our vision is ATHMA, Narayana Health digital healthcare platform. Far more than an electronic medical record, it is an AI-powered, interoperable healthcare operating system that connects clinical care, hospital operations, professionals, patients, laboratories, pharmacies, and healthcare networks within a single digital environment. This matters especially for us: digital health can generate enormous social impact by making care more efficient, accessible, and affordable.
The greatest opportunity here is scale. An innovation piloted in a single hospital can be extended across an entire network. A model built in one country can be adapted by others facing similar challenges. This is where technology becomes an instrument of shared development.
Our ambition is for the Smart Hospital project to become a living laboratory for the healthcare of the future — integrating artificial intelligence, data science, interoperability, telemedicine, digital command centers, intelligent scheduling, clinical decision support, research, education, and advanced hospital management.
But a smart hospital cannot exist in isolation. It must be connected to primary care, specialized services, emergency medical services, diagnostic networks, and referral centers — to the health system as a whole.
This is especially important for the Global South. The future of healthcare cannot be one in which only the wealthiest populations have access to the best technologies. Innovation must reduce inequalities, not deepen them. Technology must serve humanity, science must serve society, and innovation must ultimately serve the patient.
Professor Shetty, thank you once again for share to NDB and also Brazil your operational platform, and for your commitment to sharing Narayana Health’s knowledge and technology with the NDB Smart Hospital project.
This MoU is a cornerstone of NDB-BRICS cooperation in advanced healthcare. Our first step is an Intelligent Hospital initiative linking India and China, establishing a smart hospital for Brazil’s Unified Health System (SUS). Our broader goal is a cooperative, scalable smart‑hospital model that integrates member‑country technologies and innovations to deliver high‑quality, technologically care at truly affordable cost. We intend to combine different innovations from our member countries. For example, China’s strengths in embedding AI in care delivery, digitalization, and state‑of‑the‑art medical imaging; India’s excellence in healthcare digital operational platform, using Athma, and Russia’s capacities in nuclear treatment and radio-isotopes products.
NDB is proud to be part of this journey.
This partnership – NDB and Narayana Health – is a step toward a future where hospitals become instruments of social transformation, and in which BRICS countries can help improve healthcare for millions of people.
Thank you all and special thanks to you Professor Devi Shetty.