If you connect the keynote with the fourteen sessions, you will walk out with an idea that can change your job, your profile and your company forever.
From HIMSS India 2015 to the Functional AI Pyramid and GDHS 2026 — why connecting the inaugural keynote with fourteen sessions can reshape your next move.
Dr. Rajendra Pratap Gupta
November 08, 20264 min read
Inaugural Keynote, Global Digital Health Summit 2026 · 20 November · Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi
More than eleven years ago, I stood in front of India's healthcare establishment, including the Minister of health, Government of India and the senior leaders from Indian healthcare in audience, and told them something they did not want to hear. Some smiled politely. Some were offended. Almost nobody believed it.
Today, it is happening in front of your eyes. I am not here to say I told you so. I am here to tell you what happens next, because what is coming in 2027 will make the last eleven years look pale and slow.
2015: The message from HIMSS India
More than eleven years ago, in 2015, as Chairman of HIMSS India, I said:
Technology eliminates the middlemen. The future of healthcare lies in the hands of technology, not doctors.
In 2015, that was heresy. Healthcare was built on layers of intermediaries, and the doctor was the unquestioned centre of every decision. Saying technology would take that place was not a prediction anyone wanted to applaud. Eleven years on, look around: teleconsultation, AI diagnostics and digital public infrastructure are removing those layers one by one. The National Health Policy 2017 and the National Digital Health Mission carried the same idea into how a country of 1.4 billion thinks about health and technology.
I predicted it. It happened. That is the first dot.
2024: The world is now for Creators, not competitors
At GDHS 2024, I told the audience: this is the time for creators, not competitors, and that was my parting message to everyone.
Competitors fight over the same patients, the same contracts, the same shrinking margins. Creators build what does not yet exist. When the ground is shifting, the advantage goes to the people who build new value, not the ones who defend old positions.
That is the second dot.
2025: The Functional AI Pyramid
At GDHS 2025, I unveiled the Functional AI Pyramid: a five-level map of how, and when, AI will progressively integrate into healthcare.
It answered the question everyone was asking but no one answered. Not whether AI will enter medicine, but in what order, at what depth, and what that means for the doctor, the nurse, the hospital and the company at each stage. The Pyramid is now becoming a competency standard for clinicians and healthcare organisations.
That is the third dot.
2026: What is coming next
In 2015, I told you what would happen. It did. This year, I will tell you what is coming next year.
A future that is both exciting and scary. Which one it is depends on how you take it.
This talk will change your perspective, one hundred percent, on the future role of technology in healthcare. It is not a trend report. It is not a list of buzzwords. It is a specific picture of what changes in 2027, and of who will be on the wrong side of it. Some of you will leave energised. Some of you will leave unsettled. The ones who leave unsettled and act on it will be the winners.
Connect the dots to see your future
The inaugural keynote is the starting point, not the whole story.
Over two days, 20 and 21 November, fourteen sessions will take each part of that future and make it concrete: the Hospital of the Future and the Clinic of the Future built onsite as working models, not demos; senior doctors and AI tested side by side before real patients; and the global platforms that take solutions from India to the world.
If you connect the keynote with those fourteen sessions, you will walk out with an idea that can change your job, your work and your company forever.
The promise
Here is what I expect will happen.
You will arrive with a business plan. By the end of the summit, you will kill it. Not because it was a bad plan, but because you will have seen a future it was not written for.
And then you will create something truly valuable.
That will be the power of this summit.
That is a gentleman's promise.
Dr. Rajendra Pratap Gupta, PhD
Global Digital Health Summit 2026 · 20–21 November 2026 · Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi
Dr. Rajendra Pratap Gupta is Founder & Chairman of Digital Health Associates and former Chairman of HIMSS India. He architected India's National Health Policy 2017 and the National Digital Health Mission.
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