Ajay is a Professor at the Goa Institute of Management. He holds a doctoral degree from the University of London for his work on developing an mHealth-enabled intervention for hypertension and diabetes care in Himachal Pradesh, India.

Ajay has, overall, 18 years of experience in non-communicable disease (NCD) epidemiology and prevention. In the past ten years, he was into the application of digital health for improving the care delivery of common chronic NCD conditions in primary care. His work led to the development of the "mPower Heart Digital Health System" for NCD care. The electronic clinical decision support (EDSS) module of the mPower Heart Digital Health System has been integrated into the national Electronic Health Record portal of the Government of India.

Besides, Ajay has assisted the World Health Organization (WHO) in developing a digital health Application, namely mPEN, for facilitating the implementation of the WHO-PEN package for NCD care in the South East Asian Region countries.

He was an Emerging Leader Fellow of the World Heart Federation and was a Public Health Leader Fellow of the PHFI-Emory University Consortium. He has published more than 50 scholarly papers and eight chapters/books/reports [H-Index: 19].

1. Gupta P, Singh K, Shivashankar R, Singh K, Vamadevan A, Mohan V, Kadir MM, Tandon N, Narayan KM, Prabhakaran D, Ali MK. Healthcare utilisation and expenditure patterns for cardio-metabolic diseases in South Asian cities: the CARRS Study. BMJ Open. 2020 Sep 30;10(9):e036317. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2019-036317. PMID: 32998917.
2. Prabhakaran D, Mandal S, Krishna B, Magsumbol M, Singh K, Tandon N, Narayan KMV, Shivashankar R, Kondal D, Ali MK, Srinath Reddy K, Schwartz JD; GeoHealth Hub Study investigators, COE-CARRS Study investigators. Exposure to Particulate Matter Is Associated With Elevated Blood Pressure and Incident Hypertension in Urban India. Hypertension. 2020 Oct;76(4):1289-1298. doi:10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.120.15373. Epub 2020 Aug 17. PMID: 32816598; PMCID:PMC7484465.
3. Prabhakaran D, Chandrasekaran AM, Singh K, Mohan B, Chattopadhyay K, Chadha DS, Negi PC, Bhat P, Sadananda KS, Ajay VS, Singh K, Praveen PA, Devarajan R, Kondal D, Soni D, Mallinson P, Manchanda SC, Madan K, Hughes AD, Chathurvedi N, Roberts I, Ebrahim S, Reddy KS, Tandon N, Pocock S, Roy A, Kinra S; Yoga-CaRe Trial Investigators. Yoga-Based Cardiac Rehabilitation After Acute Myocardial Infarction: A Randomized Trial. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2020 Apr 7;75(13):1551-1561. doi: 10.1016/j.jacc.2020.01.050. PMID: 32241371; PMCID: PMC7132532.
4. Gupta P, Prieto-Merino D, Ajay VS, Singh K, Roy A, Krishnan A, Narayan KMV, Ali MK, Tandon N, Prabhakaran D. Cardiovascular risk prediction in India: Comparison of the original and recalibrated Framingham prognostic models in urban populations. Wellcome Open Res 2019, 4:71
5. Shah MK, Kondal D, Patel SA, Singh K, Devarajan R, Shivashankar R, Ajay VS, Menon VU, Varthakavi PK, Viswanathan V, Dharmalingam M, Bantwal G, Sahay RK, Masood MQ, Khadgawat R, Desai A, Prabhakaran D, Narayan KMV, Tandon N, Ali MK. Effect of a multicomponent intervention on achievement and improvements in quality-of-care indices among people with Type 2 diabetes in South Asia: the CARRS trial. Diabet Med. 2019 Sep 3. doi: 10.1111/dme.14124. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 31479537.
6. Rawal I, Ghosh S, Hameed SS, Shivashankar R, Ajay VS, Patel SA, Goodman M, Ali MK, Narayan KMV, Tandon N, Prabhakaran D. Association between poor oral health and diabetes among Indian adult population: potential for integration with NCDs. BMC Oral Health. 2019 Aug 20;19(1):191. doi: 10.1186/s12903-019-0884-4. PubMed PMID: 31429749; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6701092.

• Deputy Director and Head-Health Systems Unit, Centre for Chronic Disease Control, New Delhi
• Senior Research Scientist & Associate Professor, Public Health Foundation of India, New Delhi
• PHFI WTP PhD Research Scholar, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
• Health Trainer, Skillshare International, UK