On the afternoon of January 14, 2026, in Hanoi, the National Health Information Center (NHIC) - Ministry of Health organized the workshop “Kick-off to Promote Cooperation Activities in Medical AI,” while officially launching the Responsible Health AI Network in Viet Nam (V-RHAIN) within the framework of professional cooperation with HealthAI. The workshop attracted a large number of participants both in person and online, focusing discussions on trends in medical AI, requirements related to governance, ethics, and legal compliance, as well as orientations for promoting controlled pilot implementation to ensure patient safety and protect citizens’ rights.

Speaking at the event, Permanent Deputy Minister of Health Vu Manh Ha emphasized that medical AI is a field with direct impacts on people’s lives, health, and rights. Therefore, research, piloting, and deployment processes must be carried out cautiously and according to a clear roadmap, linked to risk management based on levels of impact, while ensuring patient safety, health data security, transparency, fairness, and accountability.

Permanent Deputy Minister of Health Vu Manh Ha delivering remarks at the workshop

Within the framework of the event, the National Institute of Nutrition and the National Health Information Center (NHIC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding on “Research and development of a nutrition counseling application integrated with clinical data from electronic medical records.” This cooperation is of practical significance, connecting the Institute’s strengths in nutrition expertise with NHIC’s capabilities in health data and digital platforms, aiming to develop AI solutions for nutrition counseling and health management in a personalized, safe, and responsible manner.

Signing ceremony of the Memorandum of Understanding between the National Health Information Center (NHIC – Ministry of Health) and the National Institute of Nutrition at the Medical AI Workshop

According to the Memorandum of Understanding, the two parties agreed to collaborate on several key areas, including: building and developing nutrition databases for counseling purposes; researching and designing AI/Machine Learning models to support risk identification, behavior analysis, and early warning; strengthening data security and compliance with personal data protection regulations; connecting nutrition data with health data platforms to support personalized recommendations; developing remote nutrition counseling systems (TeleNutrition/apps); and conducting training and communication activities to raise public awareness of using digital applications as tools for proactive health management.

Notably, the cooperation also aims to address in-depth content for vulnerable groups such as children, pregnant women, and people with chronic non-communicable diseases. This includes standardizing and sharing anthropometric and nutrition data, as well as researching and developing AI-based software applications to support nutritional status assessment, dietary intake evaluation, and monitoring and surveillance of the population’s nutritional status, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of growth monitoring, early intervention, and health improvement.

The signing of the cooperation agreement between the National Institute of Nutrition and NHIC represents a concrete step toward promoting a responsible medical AI ecosystem, integrating nutrition knowledge and health data within a unified digital ecosystem to serve the public, while contributing to the Ministry of Health’s objectives for digital health development in the coming period.

At the workshop, the National Institute of Nutrition also delivered a presentation titled “Food databases are the greatest challenge in developing AI applications for dietary assessment and personalized meal planning,” presented by PhD. Hoang Thi Duc Ngan, Head of the Community Nutrition Department, National Institute of Nutrition. The presentation emphasized that “data foundations and data quality” are prerequisite conditions for AI to reliably support dietary assessment and personalized nutrition counseling. Accordingly, food databases must be standardized, comprehensive, regularly updated, interoperable, and ensure data security throughout the processes of data collection, management, and utilization.

Some images from the workshop:

PhD. Hoang Thi Duc Ngan, Head of the Community Nutrition Department, National Institute of Nutrition, presenting at the workshop.