NHA Announces Winners of NHCX Hackathon, organised under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission to promote innovation around the National Health Claims Exchange (NHCX)
NHA Announces Winners of NHCX Hackathon, organised under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission to promote innovation around the National Health Claims Exchange (NHCX)
The National Health Authority (NHA) has successfully conducted the NHCX Hackathon organised under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) to promote innovation around the National Health Claims Exchange (NHCX). The winning teams presented their solutions at the NHCX Innovation Meet held on 6–7 March 2026 at IIT Hyderabad, where their solutions were showcased and recognised. The two-day event conducted over 6th and 7th March 2026 also marked the Grand Finale of the NHCX Hackathon, conducted from 22nd February to 28th February 2026.
The hackathon was organised in collaboration with ecosystem partners, including Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), IIT Hyderabad, National Resource Centre for EHR Standards (NRCeS), General Insurance Council (GIC), Google, Insurance Information Bureau (IIB), National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers (NABH), India Insurtech Association (IIA) and NATHealth.
The National Health Claims Exchange (NHCX) is one of the three gateways under ABDM, built to simplify and standardise health insurance claims processing across the country. It provides a unified digital infrastructure for seamless exchange of claims data among hospitals, insurance companies, and patients.
The hackathon invited participants to develop solutions addressing key operational challenges in health insurance claims processing and ecosystem interoperability. Under the Hackathon (Build) track, participants worked on developing open-source utilities for Legacy Systems to NHCX-aligned FHIR Converter (Eligibility Check, Claim, Pre-authorisation and Communication workflows), Clinical Documents to FHIR Structured Data Converter (Diagnostic Reports and Discharge Summaries), and PDF to NHCX-aligned Insurance Plan FHIR Bundle.
Under the Ideathon track, participants were invited to develop business use cases leveraging NHCX capabilities to address ecosystem-level challenges such as Misuse/Abuse detection and management leveraging NHCX capabilities and Optimisation of Claims Processing Time & Cost. These problem statements were designed to encourage solutions leveraging standardised FHIR data, ABDM registries and NHCX workflows to improve interoperability, efficiency and transparency in the health insurance ecosystem.
The hackathon witnessed encouraging participation from across the healthcare, insurance and technology ecosystem, reflecting growing interest in building interoperable and standards-based solutions for India’s digital health insurance infrastructure. A total of 112 submissions were made across the five problem statements and were evaluated by an independent expert jury comprising representatives from IIT Hyderabad, NRCeS, GIC, Google, IIA, NATHealth and NHA. Among the hackathon tracks, the top three teams were selected for each problem statement.
Participants included health-tech startups, insurtech companies, insurers, TPAs, hospitals including PMJAY-empanelled hospitals, HMIS vendors, academic institutions, developers, students and technology innovators, reflecting a diverse and collaborative innovation ecosystem.
The NHCX Innovation Meet, held on 6–7 March 2026 at IIT Hyderabad, brought together regulators, state governments, industry leaders, technology innovators and academic institutions to advance the adoption of interoperable, standards-aligned health claims solutions under ABDM. The event brought together leaders from government, healthcare institutions, insurers, technology organisations and academia to discuss the future of digital health claims infrastructure in India.
(L-R) Prof. G. Narahari Sastry, Dean, IIT Hyderabad; Sh. Saurabh Gaur, Secretary, Health, Medical & Family Welfare, Government of Andhra Pradesh; Dr. Sunil Kumar Barnwal, CEO, National Health Authority; Dr. Girdhar Gyani, Director General, Association of Healthcare Providers of India (AHPI) & Sh. Kiran Gopal Vaska, JS&MD ABDM, National Health Authority.
The second day of the NHCX Innovation Meet commenced with the inaugural session graced by Dr. Sunil Kumar Barnwal, CEO, National Health Authority; Shri Saurabh Gaur, Secretary, Health, Medical & Family Welfare, Government of Andhra Pradesh; Dr. Girdhar Gyani, Director General, Association of Healthcare Providers of India (AHPI); and Prof. G. Narahari Sastry, Dean, IIT Hyderabad, among other esteemed guests and partners from industry and academia.
The event featured presentations by winning teams showcasing their solutions, keynote addresses, and panel discussions focused on strengthening standardisation, interoperability and efficiency in the health insurance claims ecosystem.
Prominent dignitaries including Shri Ajay Seth, Chairman of IRDAI and Dr. Sunil Kumar Barnwal, CEO, National Health Authority, along with senior leaders from government, hospitals, insurers and digital health organisations, addressed the gathering during the two-day event.
In his address, Dr. Sunil Kumar Barnwal, CEO, NHA, highlighted the complexity of health claims as one of the most persistent pain points in India’s health insurance ecosystem and underscored the role of NHCX in bringing standardisation and interoperability to a process that affects millions of citizens. He stated that “the National Health Claims Exchange is not limited to hospitals and insurance companies alone; it is a platform designed to serve the entire healthcare ecosystem, including patients, healthcare providers, insurers, and technology innovators. The long-term vision for NHCX is similar to digital public infrastructure like UPI, where people may not know the underlying institution running the system, but they trust the platform because it works seamlessly and reliably for them.”
Across the inaugural addresses, dignitaries converged on a common message that digital technologies, artificial intelligence and data-driven systems are central to strengthening claims processing and improving the quality of care delivered at scale.
In his address, Shri Saurabh Gaur, Secretary, Health, Medical & Family Welfare, Government of Andhra Pradesh, underlined that “in Andhra Pradesh, we believe strongly in the power of building these foundational blocks of digital public infrastructure. The state has taken an all-out approach to creating ABHA numbers for the entire population and is taking this mission very seriously. This reflects our commitment to strengthening digital public infrastructure and ensuring that every citizen becomes part of the digital health ecosystem.”
The Innovation Meet featured panel discussions featuring representatives from organisations across the health insurance ecosystem, including NABH, NATHealth, Insurance Information Bureau (IIB), insurers, TPAs and digital health innovators. The discussions were focused on themes such as standardisation in claims settlement, accelerating NHCX adoption across hospitals and insurers, and the role of technology and data standards in transforming claims processing workflows.
Day 1 of the Innovation Meet focused on the technical and operational dimensions of the claims challenge, with sessions on standardisation in claims settlement and on transforming the health insurance value chain through artificial intelligence and technology. Day 2 focused on questions of scale and adoption and examined the future of claims processing and the specific barriers and enablers for hospital adoption of NHCX.
As part of the event, technology demonstration stalls were also set up by organisations including Google, AWS, NRCeS, NABH and NHA to showcase innovations and digital infrastructure within the ecosystem.
During the event on 7th March, the National Health Authority (NHA) also recognised key contributors to the digital health ecosystem. This included awards for the Hackathon and Ideathon winners, the launch and felicitation of NHCX Champions and ABDM Ambassadors, and recognition of early integrators of NHCX with PM-JAY systems. NHCX Champions recognises organisations that have played a dedicated role in operationalising and scaling NHCX across the payer and provider ecosystem. ABDM Ambassadors acknowledges organisations and professional bodies that have actively built awareness of ABDM within their networks, extending the programme’s reach beyond what government channels alone can achieve. NHCX–PMJAY Early Integrators felicitates organisations that have successfully built modules enabling PM-JAY claims to be submitted through NHCX, thereby bringing the world’s largest publicly funded health assurance scheme onto a standardised, interoperable claims exchange. The first cohort of awardees across all three initiatives were announced at the Innovation Meet.
The two-day event was concluded by Sh. Kiran Gopal Vaska, Joint Secretary and Mission Director (ABDM), NHA, who presented a synthesis of the deliberations across both days, which was then followed by the valedictory address delivered by Sh. Ajay Seth, Chairman, IRDAI. Through the combination of ecosystem-driven innovation, high-level policy dialogue, and recognition of partners driving NHCX adoption on the ground, the Innovation Meet is expected to generate significant momentum towards a digitally-first, interoperable health claims ecosystem in India.
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