Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Telangana setting benchmarks with AI-driven govtech projects

By Telangana Today

Published: Updated On - 10:03 PM, Sat - 2 January 21

Hyderabad: Telangana government has been a frontrunner in adopting and encouraging emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) across India. Over the years, the State has emerged as a test bed for innovation, which led to companies choosing the city to set up their innovation labs.

Declaring 2020 as the Year of AI, the State led several initiatives with applications ranging sectors such as healthcare, e-governance, agriculture, surveillance and many more. Telangana IT Minister KT Rama Rao released the report “Telangana’s Year of AI – 2020 and Beyond” in Hyderabad on Saturday highlighting the strides made by the State.

To meet the pressing need to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic, the State initiated a Covid-19 Data Platform that delivers over 100 dashboards using anonymised government and public datasets. It enabled the government to take timely decisions on augmenting medical capacities and systematic unlocking of specific industries during early phases.

Telangana’s official Covid19 app has been designed as a single-source of official information, updates and advisories during the pandemic, with features such as telemedicine module integrated with the app for remote medical consultations as well as AI-based multilingual chatbot for interactive self-assessment.

Real-time digital authentication

Telangana is the first State in the country to build a digital authentication platform, leveraging emerging technologies making Government service delivery efficient, convenient and transparent. As a part of this rollout, over 32,000 pensioners have registered on the T-App Folio to avail annual certificate, out of three lakh registered pensioners.

Old age pensioners need not visit the government office or submit a certificate that she or he is alive. This became a powerful service during the Covid-19 pandemic.

AI-based Anthropometry for newborns

AI is empowering ASHA and Anganwadi workers in Telangana to improve the newborn health space. Wadhwani AI is creating a smartphone-based technology that will allow frontline workers to screen for low-birth-weight babies in rural homes.

This AI-powered visual weighing machine will provide accurate, tamper-proof, geo-tagged measurements on a smartphone, without additional hardware or data connectivity. A controlled setting has been created in Niloufer Hospital, Hyderabad, where the government collected data from over 3,500 newborns for algorithmic training and validation exercises.

AI for agriculture

Another AI solution developed by Wadhwani AI helps detect Pink Bollworm and American Bollworm, two of the most devastating pests for the cotton crop, currently deployed in Adilabad and Rangareddy districts.

The State is piloting a solution in collaboration with NITI Aayog to categorise the produce qualitatively and accurately, ensuring fair compensation for the farmer and ensuring good quality produce for the consumer.

Crowd management solution

A solution developed by a startup was deployed by the government that estimates crowd count in real-time using surveillance cameras (CCTV), and raise an alert when the crowd density numbers cross a threshold. This is particularly effective to predict and prevent stampedes.
Skilling initiative

Telangana Academy for Skill and Knowledge (TASK) along with Telangana State Council of Higher Education (TSCHE) has joined hands with Microsoft and Nasscom FutureSkills to implement the March to Million initiative, which aims at skilling one million youth in AI by 2021. For the first batch, about 20,537 students have been enrolled for the programme from 383 colleges covered across 31 districts of Telangana.

“I am glad that TASK and TSCHE have partnered for this initiative. The students of our state must make use of this opportunity to skill themselves in emerging technologies,” said KTR.

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