Sunil Kumar Barnwal

Sunil Kumar Barnwal, a 1997-batch IAS officer of the Jharkhand cadre, was appointed CEO of the National Health Authority in August 2025. He brings more than 25 years of experience across education, IT, industry promotion, energy, and governance. As head of the agency implementing Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY, the world’s largest publicly funded health insurance scheme covering 55 crore beneficiaries, he is steering India’s most consequential health AI agenda.

He has been straightforward about the challenge. “The application of AI in healthcare is extremely important. It is creating a huge opportunity to transform healthcare delivery in India, from primary healthcare to tertiary healthcare. But AI should never be used without thoughtful consideration of the consequences. It must be used with care and in combination with the physician,” he says.

Barnwal is building an AI benchmarking platform using anonymised datasets from AIIMS and public hospitals, requiring every AI solution to be validated against real Indian patient data before population-scale deployment. 

At the 2025 Regional Open Digital Health Summit, conducted by WHO for the South-East Asia region, he presented India’s model under Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission as a global template. “Generative AI is not a substitute for clinical expertise—it is a multiplier of human capability. But its effectiveness is directly proportional to data quality and interoperability,” he said. He is actively shaping India’s forthcoming national AI policy for healthcare.