PATH has launched the largest study of its kind in Africa, recruiting 9,000 participants to test whether artificial intelligence can help primary care clinicians make better diagnoses and treatment decisions in resource-limited settings.
The Seattle-based global health nonprofit is deploying large-language model (LLM) technology at clinics in Nairobi to analyze patient symptoms, health histories, provider notes and lab results, and then assist with diagnosis and treatment planning.
Bilal Mateen, PATH’s first chief AI officer, is leading the organization’s wide-ranging AI initiatives that include using tools to accelerate vaccine development and deploying chatbots to discuss sensitive health topics like HPV vaccination with teenage girls. Mateen is proceeding with both excitement and caution as he navigates what he calls “potentially very risky technology” in vulnerable populations.
The medical AI-assistant study, conducted in partnership with the Kenya Paediatric Research Consortium, the University of Birmingham, and Nairobi clinic operator Penda Health, aims to provide the kind of rigorous evidence that has been missing from digital healthcare initiatives in low- and middle-income countries.
“This trial marks an important milestone for our health sector. AI has the potential to bridge health care gaps, particularly in underserved regions,” said Dr. Deborah Mlongo Barasa, Kenya’s cabinet Secretary of Health, in a release announcing the study. “We look forward to the insights it will generate to guide responsible and effective AI adoption.”
While organizations have pursued diagnostic assistance tools for years, most get stuck in pilot phases without proving their real-world value, Mateen said.
“Does this tool reduce the rate of treatment failures, people having to come back with unresolved symptoms, people being admitted to hospital as an emergency, people dying?” Mateen said. “I don’t know the answer yet.”
Results from the trial are expected by the end of the year.
PATH recently launched a second, smaller trial in Nigeria that features a toll-free hotline the provides responses to health inquiries using generative AI. The tool is called the Community Health Extension Worker Assistant (CHEWA) and is meant to serve healthcare workers who don’t have access to the internet.
The study will run until providers log 3,000 patient encounters. The work is being done in partnership with Viamo, a Canadian social enterprise.
GeekWire recently spoke to Mateen about PATH’s broader AI efforts. Here are some highlights.
Challenging misconceptions
Mateen calls out two misconceptions about AI and healthcare.
- While AI could boost the efficiency and effectiveness of providers by using diagnostic assistants, that doesn’t always equal to lower healthcare costs. Better-performance could identify more healthcare needs for lab tests, treatments, etc.
- Though LLMs are typically trained on information from higher-income nations, AI tools don’t necessarily need to be customized for local communities, depending on the use case. A patient with high blood pressure readings, for example, points to hypertension no matter where they live.
Faster, cheaper breakthroughs
PATH is testing whether Google’s AI co-scientist can identify correlations in immune response and vaccine effectiveness that normally require multimillion-dollar trials to prove, potentially shortcutting research for new vaccines.
The nonprofit is also using AI to search scientific literature for “unicorn biomarkers” — rare biological signals that could help fight deadly diseases including rotavirus, gastroenteritis and Respiratory Syncytial Virus.
AI on touchy subjects
Mateen is interested in chatbots taking the lead in uncomfortable conversations about sensitive issues such as vaccinating against human papilloma virus, for example, which is sexually transmitted and can cause cervical cancer.
It can be awkward discuss these serious issues with teenage girls and in some countries these topics are strictly taboo, said Mateen. “We’ve discovered it’s much easier to get that 14-year-old to speak to an empathetic chatbot, than it is a teacher or some other authority figure in their lives.”
Supporting regulation creation
PATH is hoping to land a grant to support the establishment of healthcare related AI-regulations in low- and middle-income countries.
AI-based technology poses potentially heightened risks for these populations, Mateen said, given their limited access to healthcare, minimal regulatory oversight in this area, and lack of recourse if the AI goes awry.
PATH has spent decades helping these nations strengthen regulations for vaccines, drugs and diagnostic testing, he said. “As much as we want to be the pioneers delivering the next thing, we also recognize a responsibility for us to make sure that there is a mechanism by which us and others are held to account.”
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