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Building Responsible AI For Global Health

ABSTRACT

Every day, Africa’s burgeoning community of data scientists, machine learning specialists, and researchers is exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) can contribute to tackling local challenges south of the Sahara. Failure to invest in responsible AI development, which strives to be inclusive, rights-based, and sustainable, may lead to a future where AI exacerbates inequality, fragility, and the effects of climate change in Africa. This project, through a small-grants call and mentorship program, will catalyze an ecosystem of development-oriented entrepreneurs and innovators who are deploying AI in Africa. It is part of the four-year Artificial Intelligence for Development in Africa (AI4D Africa) program, a joint endeavour between the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and IDRC, and is also supported by IDRC’s AI for Global Health (AI4GH) initiative.

LOCATION

East, West, and Southern Africa


SUBPROJECTS

Project 1 — Rology
Country: 
Egypt
Focus Area: 
Medical Imaging
IDRC Alignment:
Democratizing Access to Care
Project Summary: 
“Rology Connect” offers a zero-setup cost, an end-to-end, high-quality, and integrated teleradiology solution to the diagnostic imaging facilities in the MEA region, especially in the underserved healthcare communities and distant geographical areas.
Project 2 — Neural Labs Africa Ltd
Country: 
Kenya
Focus Area: 
Medical Imaging
IDRC Alignment:
Democratizing Access to Care
Project Summary: 
Using Deep Learning and Computer Vision technology to enhance medical images for radiologists and hospitals in real time to identify diseases such as Pneumonia, TB, and lung cancer. By this, the solution empower doctors to aid accurate diagnoses.
Project 3 — Vectorgram Health
Country: 
Kenya
Focus Area: 
Medical Imaging
IDRC Alignment:
Democratizing Access to Care
Project Summary: 
Accurate (93%), fast African focused AI powered diagnostic tool that assist radiologist in accurate diagnosis, reducing the turn around time and is tested using African data to reduce biasness on the African population.
Project 4 — Intixel
Country: 
Egypt
Focus Area: 
Medical Imaging
IDRC Alignment:
Gender Focus
Project Summary: 
A web-based CAD software system for breast cancer detection in screening mammography. The solution seamlessly integrates with the PACS system in hospitals, supply initial diagnosis markups and draft reports to the image data from the imaging modality.
Project 5 — Saratani AI
Country: 
Tanzania
Focus Area: 
Diagnostics
IDRC Alignment:
Gender Focus
Project Summary: 
A more flexible and user-friendly cancer diagnostic device made using Deep-learning techniques, trained with quite a large cervical PAP smear cytological image with plans of making it offline. The model can be replicated to diagnose other forms of cancer.
Project 6 — Vectorgram Health
Country: 
Kenya
Focus Area: 
Diagnosis
IDRC Alignment:
Gender Focus
Project Summary: 
Early diagnosis of breast Cancer using an AI model, Deep Neural Networks trained on augmented Mammography datasets to execute scalable Computer Vision inference accessible anywhere in the world on an online platform
Project 7 — The Pathology Network
Country: 
Kenya
Focus Area: 
Pathology
IDRC Alignment:
Gender Focus
Project Summary: 
Connecting doctors, hospitals and the patients they serve to a global network of pathologists. Leveraging on technology to enable doctors to order patient’s tests, tests samples are picked, processing arranged, and the samples distributed to a network of pathologists for reporting.
Project 8 — Palindrome Data
Country: 
South frica
Focus Area: 
Predictive/Analytics
IDRC Alignment:
Sexual and Reproductive Health
Project Summary: 
Predictive/analytic AI models that facilities triage of HIV patients who need more support and those who need less intensive support. The algorithms do this by identifying characteristics of patients that are likely to cause adverse health outcomes.
Project 9 — Sophie Bot
Country: 
Kenya
Focus Area: 
Chatbot
IDRC Alignment:
Sexual and Reproductive Health
Project Summary: 
Sophie Bot is an artificial intelligence persona to answer users’ questions on sexual health. Think of her as “Siri for sexual health”. We take great care to feed her with curated verified information from our partner/investor UNFPA Kenya.
Project 10 — Wekebere
Country: 
Uganda
Focus Area: 
Maternal and Child Health
IDRC Alignment:
Maternal and Child Health
Project Summary: 
Using machine learning, the innovation allows for improved healthcare delivery by enhancing early detection of fetal well-being, thus increasing mother and infant safety, preventing maternal and neonatal morbidities, and lowering healthcare costs.

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