The International Digital Health & Artificial Intelligence Research Collaborative (I-DAIR) is a project to co-create a new international platform for the inclusive, impactful and responsible R&D of digital technologies for health. I-DAIR seeks to be both independent and distributed to better federate science and innovation capacity from around the world to harness the digital transformation for the advancement of universal health coverage and the promotion of healthy lives (SDG 3). It can be visualised as a “distributed CERN for AI and digital health”, to pool resources, build a shared research agenda while advancing transdisciplinary collaboration in science.