The World Health Organization and its UN partners are set to showcase groundbreaking AI healthcare applications at a specialized workshop during the AI for Good Summit 2025 in Geneva.
The session, titled 'Enabling AI for Health Innovation and Access,' will be hosted by WHO alongside the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on July 11. These three organizations form the founding agencies of the Global Initiative on AI for Health (GI-AI4H), a collaborative endeavor launched in 2023 to harness AI's potential for healthcare advancement.
The workshop will highlight several cutting-edge AI applications addressing urgent global health challenges. These include large language models designed for medical triage in conflict zones, AI-driven diagnostic tools for non-communicable diseases, and intellectual property commercialization pathways for health technologies. Attendees will also get a preview of WHO's upcoming AI in Traditional Medicine Technical Brief before its official launch later that day.
The GI-AI4H initiative represents a significant evolution in the UN's approach to healthcare AI. It builds upon the work of the ITU-WHO Focus Group on AI for Health (2018-2023), which developed a benchmarking framework for evaluating AI-based health solutions. The current initiative aims to establish robust governance structures and technical standards while facilitating knowledge sharing across the global health and AI communities.
"As health systems worldwide grapple with rising demand, limited resources, and disparities in access, AI offers significant potential to enhance emergency response, optimize resource allocation, and expand access to care," notes the WHO in its event description. However, the organization also emphasizes that swift integration of AI into health ecosystems requires robust frameworks for ethical governance and implementation.
The workshop is specifically tailored for policymakers, technologists, health practitioners, and humanitarian leaders. It will focus on three key themes: the global landscape of AI for health, real-world use cases at the frontlines of healthcare, and the intersection of intellectual property and AI in health.