AI in medicine: IIT Hyderabad trains 15 Apollo MBBS students in research tools

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad has conducted a training on ‘AI in Medicine, Drug Development and Biology’ 15 final year students of Apollo Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (AIMSR), Hyderabad. This 10 day intense academic training programme was conducted from September 23 toOctober 3, 2026. 

The training programme aimed to introduce computational methods used in biomedical research and explore how AI tools could support clinical practice, disease diagnosis and drug development to the final year medical students. The initiative also opened avenues for joint research between medical practitioners and IIT Hyderabad researchers.

The research group of G. Narahari Sastry, faculty member in the Department of Biotechnology and dean of sponsored research and consultancy at IIT Hyderabad has organised the training programme. The programme was a combination of lectures, demonstrations, mentoring and practical projects.

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AI projects in medicine

Students worked on various projects, during the training programmes, using open-access datasets. The topics covered identifying cancer through long-term blood parameters, using antimicrobial resistance data to guide antibiotic prescriptions, detecting diseases through medical images and predicting metabolic disorders from clinical and demographic information.

This also highlights the need for medical experts while developing and machine learning models. Representing India’s population, a gap in the open clinical data set was also highlighted in this 10-day training programme.

The institutions identified potential areas for further collaboration, including genomics-tools based personalised medicine, early detection of non-communicable diseases, medical image analysis, surgical decision support and virtual reality-based surgical training.

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Focus on joint research

IIT Hyderabad director B S Murty highlighted the role of interdisciplinary learning in addressing complex challenges, saying, “interdisciplinary training and research, along with the use of emerging AI technologies, is very important in addressing today’s complex challenges” He also added that the institute encourages collaborations through its academic and training programmes and welcomes medical students and practitioners to explore shared research interests.

Sastry said the programme's research projects required students to present their scientific findings and create a three-minute video, where they can show their analytical thinking and communication skills. He said the experience was intended to help them “develop scientific temperament, pursue research-oriented thinking and appreciate the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in medicine”.

AIMSR dean K. Manohar noted that technology could strengthen clinical diagnosis. He said tools capable of identifying conditions such as diabetes earlier through family history and biological markers would be valuable.

Both institutions plan to continue the collaboration by expanding AI training for medical students and exploring research opportunities in diagnostics, drug development, biology and patient care.