UCL GBSH Academics Launch Project to Transform Health Outreach through Digital Innovation

DantAIU (Affordable, Inclusive and Universal Image-Based Digitisation of Paper Records) brings together an interdisciplinary team from UCL, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), and the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD). The initiative builds on the proven PaperEMR platform developed by UCL’s Dr Pratap Kumar and his collaborators in Africa, applying scalable and resource-light technology to enable real-time, multilingual digitisation of paper records from health outreach settings.

The project is led by Dr Prateek Raj, Associate Professor of Business Management and Health Sciences at UCL GBSH, alongside Dr Pratap Kumar (UCL), Dr Harsh Priya (AIIMS) and Dr Subodh Sharma (IITD). Funded by a trilateral AIIMS–IITD–UCL grant, the two-year project will run from August 2025 to July 2027.

DantAIU will integrate digitised health data into India’s Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), supporting public health monitoring and enabling AI-assisted healthcare, with a particular focus on dental and oral health through India’s National Oral Health Programme (NOHP). The project aims to:

• Improve continuity of care by giving clinicians better access to patient histories
• Enhance public health monitoring through real-time, structured data
• Empower underserved communities with access to their own health data via ABHA integration
• Reduce the documentation burden on healthcare workers
• Provide a scalable model for health systems worldwide that are still reliant on paper records

“DantAIU is about bridging the digital divide in healthcare,” said Dr Prateek Raj. “By co-designing low-cost, accessible tools with healthcare workers and patients, we can strengthen national health infrastructures and unlock the power of data to drive equitable, AI-enabled care.”

With its focus on co-creation, participatory design, and scalable innovation, DantAIU embodies UCL GBSH’s mission to deliver global health equity through interdisciplinary research and leadership. By digitising outreach health records and integrating them into national health ecosystems, the project offers a replicable model for improving care and data equity in low-resource settings worldwide.