Ethics to Shape AI Use in Healthcare, Says Jitendra Singh; BharatGen Unveils 17B Multilingual Model Param2

AI in Healthcare Must Be Guided by Ethics​

New Delhi, February 17: Ethics will play a decisive role in determining how effectively artificial intelligence is deployed in the healthcare sector, Minister of State for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, Jitendra Singh, said on Tuesday.

Speaking at a session during the AI Impact Summit, the minister emphasized that the responsible use of AI will be critical to unlocking its full potential in medical applications.

“Ethics will be a very important factor in determining how optimally AI can be used in the healthcare sector,” he said, underlining the need for careful integration of advanced technologies in sensitive domains such as health.

BharatGen Reflects Government’s Sovereign AI Push​

Referring to the government’s sovereign multilingual AI engine BharatGen, Singh said the current administration is prepared to engage with emerging technologies even in their early stages.

Launched in October 2024, BharatGen is a government-led initiative aimed at building a sovereign artificial intelligence model tailored for Indian needs. The platform provides services such as Automatic Speech Recognition and Text-to-Speech models across Indian languages.

Singh noted that while BharatGen is a government-owned model, private sector players are also developing AI-driven solutions, including digital health systems and digital case histories. He stressed that collaboration would be essential going forward.

“In the future, we will also need to integrate. Neither can we work in isolation, nor can they,” he said, pointing to the need for coordination between public and private stakeholders in AI innovation.

Param2: A 17B Multilingual Large Language Model​

At the summit session, BharatGen unveiled its new 17-billion-parameter large language model, Param2. The model is designed as a mixture of experts architecture and will support 22 Indian languages.

Rishi Bal, CEO of BharatGen, described Param2 as a multilingual system built to operate across diverse linguistic contexts in India.

The model has been developed under the BharatGen consortium, which operates from the Technology Innovation Hub at IIT Bombay and is supported by the Department of Science and Technology.

Expanding AI Across Key Sectors​

Currently, BharatGen’s AI models support multiple Indian languages, including Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, and Telugu.

In addition to general-purpose capabilities, BharatGen has released domain-specific fine-tuned models such as Ayur Param for Ayurveda, Agri Param for Indian agriculture, and Legal Param for the Indian legal domain.

According to the information shared at the session, BharatGen’s models across text, speech, and vision are positioned for use in healthcare, agriculture, education, and governance.

With the unveiling of Param2 and continued expansion of domain-focused AI tools, the government’s sovereign AI initiative signals a broader push to integrate multilingual artificial intelligence into critical sectors, while placing ethics at the center of its healthcare applications.