By pillars
AI for health
Real projects using AI to find disease earlier and bring care closer to people who live far from doctors. What works, what is still a pilot, and what nobody has proven yet.
Early diagnosis
6 stories
Health · South Africa
A Pretoria startup took its tuberculosis X-ray AI nearly four kilometers down a South African gold mine
Nexus Intelligence turned a chest X-ray model licensed from Google into a certified medical device that works offline. On World Tuberculosis (TB) Day 2026 it screened miners deep inside Mponeng Gold Mine, though no results from the mine have been published.
Health · Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia clears a homegrown AI that checks diabetics' eyes in minutes
An eye doctor in Riyadh built software that reads photos of the retina, so technicians and nurses in diabetes clinics can screen for diabetic eye disease without a specialist in the room. Saudi Arabia's medical regulator authorized it in September 2026. The company says tens of thousands of people have been screened, many for free through charity partners, but it has not published a study.
Health · Uganda
Uganda takes AI-read X-rays into the hills to find missed tuberculosis. Now faith-based clinics get their own.
Uganda's national tuberculosis (TB) program runs about 95 mobile X-ray platforms with software that flags who needs a lab test. Officials say they have screened more than 150,000 people. A new fund tests whether clinics can pay for more units themselves.
Health · Paraguay
Paraguay's tuberculosis program takes AI-read chest X-rays into its prisons
People in Paraguay's prisons account for nearly a third of the country's detected tuberculosis cases. A national screening team now brings a portable X-ray with AI reading software to prison health days, and sends anyone it flags for a lab test. The program is in use, but no results have been published yet.
Health · Benin, Mali, South Africa
How a team in Benin is testing AI that reads lung scans for tuberculosis
In a hospital study in Cotonou, an AI that reads handheld lung ultrasound caught 82% of tuberculosis (TB) cases, short of the WHO's 90% target for a triage test. A five-year trial in Benin, Mali and South Africa will show whether it works in local clinics.
Health · Zambia
Zambian midwives get an AI second opinion in cervical screening
Dawa Health says its small in-clinic device, which sorts cervical photos without internet, has helped screen more than 3,500 women since late 2025. Accuracy results that outsiders can check are still to come, from a planned validation with the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and Zambia's Ministry of Health.
Frontline care
4 stories
Health · Switzerland, Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania, India
Doctors write the exam: a global platform lets clinicians test medical AI before it reaches patients
MOOVE, an open platform from a Swiss university lab, asks doctors and humanitarian workers to grade AI answers on cases from their own clinics. Its first multi-country study, in African primary care, is under way, and early results are not yet published.
Health · China
Dial a number, ask about your health: an AI phone line in China is built for people who find apps hard
China Mobile and Ant Group, the company behind Alipay, connect an ordinary phone call to Ant's AI health assistant. The line won two global awards in 2026, but every result comes from the companies, and nobody has published how many people call it.
Health · South Africa
South African mothers send their questions on WhatsApp. An AI sorts the routine ones from the urgent.
On MomConnect, the government's free health service for pregnant women and new mothers, an open-source tool called Ask-A-Question matches routine questions to answers experts approved in advance and sends urgent messages to human staff first. Its numbers come from the team itself, and they do not always agree.
Health · Lebanon, Jordan
A WhatsApp chatbot from Beirut helps people find health answers from trusted sources
HIBA (Health Information Bot Assistant) answers everyday health questions by text or voice note, in 28 languages, using only curated material from WHO, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and UNICEF, and it will not diagnose. It was offered in Lebanon's displacement centers during the 2024 war and is still a small pilot with no independent results.
Mental health
2 stories
Mental health · Kenya
Kenyan children rarely tell anyone about abuse. A Nairobi psychologist built an AI helper designed to step aside.
Project RISE pairs body-safety lessons and teacher-led support circles with a chat assistant that speaks English, Swahili and Sheng, and is designed to hand serious disclosures to a human clinician. It has won awards but is still preparing for its first pilot, with no results yet.
Mental health · United States
A student's AI prototype that asks how you feel before it tries to help
Ordinary Days, built by University of Washington (UW) master's student Selah Key, is designed to learn a person's stress signals from devices they already own and to check in before it suggests anything. UW says it won an award in Geneva in July 2026. No results from testing it with users have been published.
