Frequently Asked Questions.

AesCode Co. is a MedTech research platform and Clinical AI validation infrastructure in India, founded in 2026. It identifies clinically significant, unsolved problems, runs interdisciplinary research cohorts, and validates AI tools for real clinical deployment — in partnership with Bharati Vidyapeeth Medical College, Pune and the Koita Centre for Digital Health (KCDH), IIT Bombay.

AesCode Co. was founded in 2026 by Nikhil Gour, who serves as Founder & CEO. A 19-year-old gap-year builder, he leads AesCode Co. and also runs Care & Beyond and Inwest, working at the intersection of Clinical AI, MedTech infrastructure, and health innovation in India.

The AesCode MedTech Hackathon — also referred to as the National MedTech Hackathon and India MedTech Hackathon — held its inaugural edition as AesCode Cohort 1, a two-week clinical-AI research hackathon at Bharati Vidyapeeth Medical College, Pune. It drew 250+ research abstracts, 20 finalist teams, and 5 clinically sourced problem statements, judged and mentored by clinicians and researchers from KCDH, IIT Bombay.

Clinical AI is artificial intelligence built and validated for use in real clinical settings — diagnosis, risk prediction, screening, and decision support. Unlike general-purpose AI, Clinical AI is held to medical evidentiary standards: reproducibility, clinical relevance, and safety in real-world deployment.

Clinical AI Validation is the process of independently testing whether an AI tool is accurate, safe, and fit for deployment in real clinical workflows. AesCode certifies models against the conditions of Indian clinical deployment, with a pass/fail evaluation and structured feedback — each certified model contributes to a growing benchmark.

Participation opens with each cohort announcement. Subscribe to AesCode Co. for updates, or email [email protected] to explore institutional collaboration. Cohort 2 is coming soon.

AesCode’s mentors and advisors include Dr. (Brig) S.P. Gorthi (Head of Neurology, Bharati Vidyapeeth Hospital, Pune), Dr. Raghavendran Lakshminarayan and Dr. Kshitij Jadhav (KCDH, IIT Bombay), and Dr. Varsha Vaidya (Professor of Medicine, Bharati Vidyapeeth, Pune), alongside research mentors and evaluators from the Koita Centre for Digital Health, IIT Bombay.

AI as a Medical Device (AIaMD / SaMD) refers to AI software that is regulated as a medical device. AesCode aligns its research and validation work with India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act 2023, the ICMR Ethical Guidelines for AI in Healthcare, and the CDSCO SaMD regulatory pathway.

AesCode Co. operates in India. Its founding clinical anchor is Bharati Vidyapeeth Medical College & Bharati Hospital, Pune, with academic partnership through the Koita Centre for Digital Health (KCDH), IIT Bombay.

The Koita Centre for Digital Health (KCDH) at IIT Bombay served as research-mentor and evaluation partner for Cohort 1, contributing the computational standards the program demanded. Bharati Vidyapeeth Medical College & Hospital, Pune provides the clinical foundation — a continuous source of documented clinical problems and a deployment context for validated tools.

AesCode uses federated learning: selected teams train AI models on real hospital data without that data ever leaving the hospital. Only model weights move — never patient records. The architecture is privacy-preserving by design, not by policy.