Press "Enter" to skip to content

In New Role, Infosys Co-founder Nandan Nilekani Comes to Rescue of Medical Council in SC

New Delhi: Donning a new role, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani seems to have come to the rescue of the Medical Council of India (MCI).

The entrepreneur has developed a software for the MCI to streamline inspections of medical colleges across the country. The software aims at minimising the human interference and devise a uniform yardstick for inspections.

On Tuesday, MCI lawyer Gaurav Sharma told the Supreme Court that the software is working fine and has been able to do away with several deficiencies of the past.

“Mr Nilekani has given us this software. We have been using this for the last six months and it is working very well. Issues of human interference, possible bias etc could be taken care of to a large extent,” MCI lawyer told a bench headed by Chief Justice of India SA Bobde.

The bench then asked the MCI to put all the details in an affidavit and submit it in the next two weeks so that further orders can be passed.

It was in September 2018 when Justice Bobde had sought for a technological solution to lay out a complete picture of how MCI inspects medical colleges and the loopholes therein.

“There are incessant disputes which reach this Court about what actually transpired at inspections of various private medical colleges by the MCI. The parties contest virtually every fact that is recorded in an inspection,” the court had then noted.

Senior lawyer Kapil Sibal, who was appointed as the amicus curiae, in this case, had suggested a computer network-based technological solution which might include artificial intelligence.

Nilekani’s name came up at this stage as an expert in the field of technology and the court then requested him to go into this problem and give concrete suggestions at the earliest.

“Mr Nilekani is at liberty to take technical assistance from various IT companies viz Wipro, Infosis, Accenture, etc for

making suggestions to this Court,” the order had then added.

This order by the court had come on petitions filed by private medical colleges, including the Al Azhar Medical College and Super Speciality Hospital in Kerala. Based on adverse inspection reports of the MCI, these colleges had been denied permission by the Centre to admit students to MBBS Course for the academic year 2017-18.

Get the best of News18 delivered to your inbox – subscribe to News18 Daybreak. Follow News18.com on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, TikTok and on YouTube, and stay in the know with what’s happening in the world around you – in real time.

Source: News18