TCS Research and Innovation
TCS Research
TCS Research: Inventing to build sustainable futures
Highlights
- Healthcare is shifting from reactive care to continuous, precision-led systems.
- Clinical applications show measurable impact across cardiology, oncology, neurology, infectious diseases and mental health.
- Clinical applications show measurable impact across cardiology, oncology, neurology, infectious diseases and mental health.
- Scalable, science-led solutions are critical to improving access, especially for underserved populations.
On this page
On this pageinpage
What are the foundations of precision health?
While good health is a shared human hope, our biological journeys remain deeply personal. Every individual's wellness is shaped uniquely by a mix of genetics, habits, and environment. Traditionally, healthcare has stepped in only after illness takes root – relying on generalised treatments that are difficult to scale. Today, prolonged research timelines, high clinical failures, and mounting costs often keep life-saving care out of reach.
The future of healthcare demands a fundamental transformation, shifting from episodic, a one-size-fits-all model toward predictive, precise, and continuously adaptive systems. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is committed to catalysing this transition through the convergence of biomedical science, multimodal-sensing, artificial intelligence, and computational modelling. Drawing on decades of multidisciplinary research across biological, chemical, physical, quantum, and computational sciences, TCS is building a unified precision health framework. It advances four integrated priorities for the future of health: (i) precision therapeutics, (ii) multiscale sensing of human health, (iii) development and application of digital and biological twins, and (iv) translation of these capabilities into scalable care delivery, beyond the walls of traditional clinical settings.
By working alongside premier hospitals, academic institutions, and global partners, TCS is operationalising a practical 'sensing-to-modelling-to-action' approach. We are directing this research where the human need is greatest, focusing on cancer, heart disease, brain disorders, mental health, and infectious illnesses, which together make up over a third of the world's disease burden. Ultimately, we want to help reshape medicine to make predictive, personalised, and affordable care a reality for communities in India and across the globe.
How does AI help drug discovery and therapeutics?
Today, more than 90% of therapeutic candidates fail to reach the clinic. This is despite decade-long research cycles that are often marked by high cost, uncertainty, and late-stage attrition. Overcoming this challenge requires a fundamental shift from generalised drug-discovery cycles towards precision-driven engineering.
Our computational molecule design platform integrates deep science with an AI-first paradigm to accelerate novel therapeutic design and development. Using generative and biological language models, it explores vast chemical and biological spaces, from small molecules to complex biologics, while optimising over 40 properties related to efficacy, safety, and developability. By predicting how early a molecule can be synthesised and identifying greener manufacturing routes early, the platform helps prevent late-stage attrition. At the same time, our integrated quantum chemistry pipeline achieves near-experimental accuracy while accelerating processing speeds by 20 to 100 times. Using this platform, a European pharmaceutical company designed initial candidates for a novel oncology target in just eight weeks, where traditional approaches can take several months.
TCS is now bringing these platform capabilities to advanced therapies – including RNA-based medicines, genome editing, engineered antibodies, and targeted protein degraders. By integrating quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) with virtual patient models, we can simulate exactly how these molecules behave, predicting their optimal dosing, safety, and effectiveness. This guides a candidate smoothly from molecular design to clinical testing, making the entire discovery process far more predictable, swift, and resource-efficient.
Why is multiscale sensing of human health vital?
True wellness relies on clear, early insights. While advanced therapies are vital, they can only do so much without a timely and accurate diagnosis. To bridge this gap, we are developing multimodal sensing methods that span molecular, cellular, tissue, and digital health spaces. By picking up subtle physical changes early on, we help clinicians make personalised decisions for patients at scale.
Our molecular diagnostics platform screens for pathogens in two complementary ways. The first is a CRISPR-based test designed to flag antimicrobial resistance quickly. The second is an untargeted Nucleic Acid Amplification Technology (NAAT) platform that detects multiple pathogens and assesses their viability. Together, these tools allow for continuous tracking of microbes, delivering clear results in a matter of hours to help local clinics make fast, informed decisions.
At the tissue scale, AI-driven digital pathology systems converts whole slide images into quantitative features to aid cancer diagnostics, processing millions of cellular features per hour. It automates the detection of important tumour features, shortening diagnostic turnaround time, and improving pathologist accuracy often constrained by rising patient load.
Looking beyond lab-based sensing, TCS is developing digital health platforms that collect continuous, real-time data from wearables and smart devices. By blending everyday physical signals—such as movement, posture, gait, brain activity, and vital signs—these systems construct unique digital biomarkers. This offers a clear, evolving window into how a person's health changes over time.
An in-ear electroencephalogram (EEG) for continuous cognitive screening and non-contact microwave imaging for wound and orthopaedic implant monitoring are select innovations of this ecosystem reflecting TCS’ vision of a vertically integrated sensing ecosystem that converges intelligent hardware, scalable computing, and AI‑driven interpretations to transform raw biological signals into actionable health intelligence.
What are digital and biological twin models?
The sensing capabilities feed into a unified digital and biological twin ecosystem, which models human biology across molecular, cellular, organ, and whole‑system levels. These models are personalised using patient‑specific data, enabling simulation of potential outcomes and supporting more proactive, informed healthcare decisions.
The brain-twin framework models neural function across neuronal, circuit, and whole‑brain levels by integrating neuroimaging and electrophysiology to support personalised simulation of cognition and neurological disorders. Complementing this, digital modelling of human behaviour using contextual speech, auditory, and textual signals enable inference of lived experiences and patterns of distress and coping.
The gut-twin model extends this view by modelling how human biology interacts with the microbiome and lifestyle factors, using simulated microbial and metabolic data alongside evolving clinical insights.
Similarly, the beating-heart model brings together cardiac rhythm, biomechanics, and blood flow, integrating movement and activity data to support real‑time assessment under everyday physiological conditions.
This is further complemented by the a musculoskeletal (MSK) Twin, which links biomechanics with neural control to model daily movement and enable continuous, feedback‑driven intervention.
TCS is also advancing ex‑vivo bio‑twins, particularly in cancer care, where digital tumour-sensing is coupled with patient‑derived cell cultures and organoid models for patient stratification and at‑scale intervention optimisation. Complemented by the QSP and AI models, these enable personalised drug-dose optimisation in virtual patient populations, augmenting the foundations for the precision healthcare delivery through adaptive clinical decision-making.
How does precision care transform cardio and cancer?
The innovations described above are now being translated into real‑world impact, completing TCS’s vision for precision and accessible healthcare at scale. By combining multimodal sensing with both patient-specific and population scale models, TCS is establishing a unified framework for delivering precision care. This approach is being strategically directed towards the diseases that drive the heaviest global and Indian health burdens, specifically cardiovascular diseases, cancer, neurodegenerative disorders, mental health conditions, and drug-resistant infections.
Cardiovascular Diseases (CVDs)
As the leading driver of global mortality and morbidity, cardiovascular diseases are a key focus of ongoing cardiovascular research initiatives for improving risk stratification, and intervention planning, especially for coronary artery disease, atrial fibrillation, Myocardial Infarction, and congenital heart disease. By integrating physiological signals like ECG, ECHO, and wearable data into patient-specific cardiac twins, TCS is enabling individualised triage and risk stratification in cardiovascular care. Our early clinical studies involving 150 patients have demonstrated sensitivity and specificity approaching 90% for identifying high‑risk groups using advanced non-invasive computational modelling.
These results are compared against the gold-standard angiography, with multi‑centre validations underway in collaboration with the Cardiological Society of India.
The work is now extending into intervention planning, with 4D beating-heart models being developed in partnership with IIT Kharagpur and clinical partners for multiple therapeutic scenarios including the complex paediatric procedure planning. Our vision is a care ecosystem where cardiac care is both timely and reliable, reducing avoidable interventions while improving long‑term outcomes across diverse populations.
Precision Oncology & Cancer Care
To advance precision oncology, TCS focuses on improving diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment selection for complex tumours like oral squamous cell carcinoma and acute lymphoblastic Leukaemia. TCS is developing a personalised therapy navigator for oncology, which integrates signals from genomics, histopathology, and live tumour models like cultures and organoids, to enhance patient stratification and clinical decision-making. In a continuing collaboration with Tata Medical Centre, this work enabled retrospective analysis of approximately 200 oral squamous cell carcinoma patients, demonstrating a strong correlation (>0.70) between AI-derived prognostic scores and real-world clinical outcomes. Further, in partnership with the Tata Translational Cancer Research Centre, TCS is operationalising end-to-end drug response profiling for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia, with the vision to deliver clinically deployable precision oncology systems.
How can we connect neurological science with digital mental wellness
To combat the rising global burden of neurological disability, our precision neurology platform focuses on continuous monitoring and targeted rehabilitation for Parkinson’s disease (PD), Dementia, and stroke. It dynamically adapts its technology to the specific clinical need: for PD, wearable sensors are deployed to continuously track motor symptoms, achieving a strong correlation with established UPDRS clinical scales. Diagnostic accuracy and prognostic performance for Dementia are improved through wearable-based longitudinal monitoring in daily living conditions, while correlating with standard Dementia rating scales like MoCA and MMSE.
For home-based stroke recovery, the approach shifts to video and speech‑based assessments that map to established clinical scales such as Fugl‑Meyer and NIH Stroke, while virtual reality is used to support rehabilitation outcomes comparable to in‑person physiotherapy.
For advanced interventions, TCS algorithms analyse neural signals to identify optimal targets for deep brain stimulation (DBS), with results that closely align with expert clinical judgement.
Building on these foundations, the programme is progressing towards closed‑loop neuromodulation, where real‑time symptom monitoring can inform adaptive stimulation to support more individualised neurological care.
How do digital mental health systems improve care?
Mental health conditions, especially depression and anxiety, remain a significant and often under‑addressed burden globally, including in India. TCS is working to address this through population-scale screening, continuous monitoring, and support for early interventions.
Furthermore, a digital emotional wellbeing companion combines self‑reported inputs with speech and text signals, along with activity‑based indicators, to support screening aligned with established diagnostic frameworks and ongoing assessment of mental health. Early results show promising results on stress and anxiety management for both normal and clinical populations.
For clinicians and care providers, offerings from the mental health initiative provide screening and assessment summaries and insights that can help extend care delivery through semi‑skilled health workers. At a system level, deployment of these offerings through the District Mental Health Programme sites is planned to enable more consistent delivery across underserved populations.
Why we must target drug-resistant infections first?
According to the global burden studies, infections, particularly those that are difficult to treat and resistant - account alone for 28% of the disease burden worldwide. TCS’ infectious disease management programme focuses on precision identification of pathogens and Anti-microbial resistance (AMR) markers, while also inferring infection trajectory to guide rational, evidence‑based, antibiotic usage.
Laboratory validation of the rapid point-of-care diagnostic protocol for AMR pathogens (CRISPR‑based) diagnostic assay, on clinical Klebsiella isolates demonstrated high specificity (>98%) and very low detection limits (<100 copies/µL), with ongoing work to expand coverage across WHO‑priority ESKAPE pathogens. In parallel, metagenomic approaches have been used to model multi‑species bacterial behaviour, showing strong correlation (>0.77) with observed growth patterns and enabling both diagnosis and prognosis within clinically relevant timeframes.
Together, these capabilities support a shift from empirical antibiotic use towards a test‑and‑prescribe approach, strengthening antimicrobial stewardship and enabling population‑scale monitoring of resistance patterns.
How can we scale precision health for optimum outcomes?
While TCS is evolving a platform‑centric approach for a growing portfolio of repurposable applications, this ecosystem confronts a central healthcare challenge.
Advancing the next frontier of scalability, TCS is embedding AI-driven precision health applications into everyday care environments, including homes, clinics, and the field. Combining wearable and mobile sensing technologies with patient-specific models, TCS’s platforms support real-world stress simulation, real-time risk assessment, and health optimisation. The cardiac and neurological wellness initiatives are already translating continuous physiological signals into actionable cardiovascular and cognitive risk insights. Through the collaborative research initiatives with elite international marathon runners, TCS has validated a care-beyond-clinic using cardiac-twins. Over a three-month study, motor sensing data including cardiac energetics and kinematics were combined with baseline clinical assessments to guide training, recovery, and injury risk management, demonstrating real-time decision support outside the clinic.
In stroke rehabilitation, our brain-twin framework enables expert‑guided, home‑based therapy, including in virtual reality (VR). By integrating neuronal function with real‑time movement and gait sensing, the platform supports remote supervision, improving therapy adherence while reducing reliance on rehabilitation infrastructure.
These developments indicate a shift towards care that is delivered continuously and closer to where people live and recover, extending clinical support beyond traditional healthcare settings in a measured and practical way.
The path to optimum health
Healthcare is steadily moving beyond reactive, episodic models towards systems that learn continuously and support more precise decision‑making over time. TCS is advancing this shift by bringing together scientific AI, multimodal sensing, and digital‑twin capabilities to improve how care is understood and delivered, at scale.
Delivering on this requires sustained progress in science, engineering, and collaboration across clinical and research ecosystems. Together, these efforts are shaping an approach to heath that is more precise, predictive, preventive, and participatory, bringing the goal of optimum health closer within reach for all.
© Copyright [2025], Tata Consultancy Services Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Document ID : CGTP014956