National Health Authority Partners with EkaCare for AI Voice Scribe in Public Hospitals

National Health Authority Taps EkaCare for Voice Documentation

The National Health Authority has selected EkaCare, a Bengaluru-based health AI startup, as its technology partner for deploying an ambient AI-enabled Voice Scribe solution across public health facilities1

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. The AI Voice Scribe will operate under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, running on National Health Authority infrastructure powered by AWS. EkaCare was chosen through NHA's Expression of Interest process for open-source ambient AI-enabled voice-to-text solutions, which included a demonstration before NHA's Evaluation Committee2

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. The solution addresses a critical gap in India's healthcare system, where millions of doctor-patient consultations occur daily but much of what is discussed never reaches a health record.

Reducing Documentation Burden Through Real-Time Transcription

The Voice Scribe listens to doctor-patient consultations as they happen and generates structured clinical notes covering complaints, medical history, medications, vital signs, laboratory findings, diagnosis and treatment plans1

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. "With the Voice Scribe, a doctor can speak with the patient in the language they are comfortable in, and a structured clinical note is ready for review when the consultation ends," said Bhaskar Chaudhary, Chief Product Officer at EkaCare1

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. The notes follow specialty-specific templates and are generated in FHIR format, the standard used across the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission2

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. This allows doctors to focus on patient care rather than typing, directly addressing the documentation burden that has long plagued healthcare providers in public health facilities.

Parrotlet-A 2.5 Pro Outperforms Competitors in Indian Healthcare

The ambient AI-enabled Voice Scribe solution is powered by two technologies developed by EkaCare: Parrotlet-A 2.5 Pro, an open-weight speech model designed specifically for Indian healthcare conversations, and Lipi, an open-source agentic harness1

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. In a benchmark involving 6,550 real Indian consultations, Parrotlet-A 2.5 Pro demonstrated the lowest error rate among all tested models across five benchmarked languages1

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. The system supports more than 15 Indian languages, including conversations where speakers engage in code-switching between languages1

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. The speech model has been specifically benchmarked across Indian English, Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, and Telugu, reflecting the linguistic diversity of India's healthcare landscape.

Doctor Oversight and Data Sovereignty Safeguards

Despite the automation, doctors retain full control over the generated records. Each note must be reviewed, edited if necessary, and approved by a verified doctor before it is saved and linked to the patient's Ayushman Bharat Health Account1

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. Doctors accessing the solution through its standalone interface authenticate through the Healthcare Professionals Registry1

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. The system is designed to operate entirely within NHA's air-gapped environment, allowing public health facilities to maintain complete control over health data1

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. This architecture addresses critical data sovereignty concerns while ensuring security in handling sensitive patient information.

Integration Options and Proven Track Record

Public hospitals can integrate the Voice Scribe into their existing Hospital Management Information Systems through an embedded mode, or use it through a standalone interface and APIs based on the open MedScribe Alliance standard for medical scribes1

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. The partnership builds on EkaCare's existing ambient medical scribe product, EkaScribe, which is already used by more than 1,000 doctors in private practice1

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. The Voice Scribe was demonstrated at NHA's National Review Meeting with States and Union Territories in Kolkata on November 5 and 6, 2026, where Vikalp Sahni, Founder and CEO, and Neha Jagadeesh, VP of AI Engineering, presented EkaCare's open-source model and agentic harness2

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. As millions of consultations take place daily in India's public health facilities, this deployment could transform how structured clinical notes are created, potentially improving care continuity and health outcomes across the country's vast public healthcare network.