How can we make digital health and AI research more connected, collaborative and relevant to the realities of healthcare in Africa?
This is one of the issues addressed by the recently established DigiHealthAllianceAfrica cluster, which brings together SkincAIr and four other Global Health EDCTP3-funded projects: LINDAFAMILIA, AFRICA-RI, CUD LUS4TB and IMCI-PLUS.
These projects address different health challenges, thus widening the potential for collaboration in key areas like digital health systems, federated research infrastructure, AI-enabled diagnostics, and the generation of high-quality health data.
For SkincAIr, this means connecting our work on developing an AI-powered mobile app for the detection and prediction of skin neglected tropical diseases across five Sub-Saharan African countries, together with:
- LINDA-FAMILIA: strengthening open-source digital health systems and moving from paper-based to integrated electronic records in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
- AFRICAI-RI: building a federated medical imaging research infrastructure across 10 sub-Saharan African sites, alongside complementary initiatives working on digital health and AI applications in various clinical areas.
- CAD LUS4TB: combining lung ultrasound and AI to improve TB diagnosis in Benin, Mali and South Africa.
- IMCI-PLUS: working to strengthen the implementation of point of care ultrasound to improve child health in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania.
These projects offer many learning opportunities, particularly with regard to data, infrastructure, interoperability, AI development, and building solutions that work in African healthcare contexts.
We look forward to contributing to this growing collaboration through DigiHealthAllianceAfrica, and to exploring what we can achieve together.
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