How AI Could Revolutionize Global Health
By Ahoor Saleem, Perspectives Editor (2024-2025)
Editorials are special contributions made by members of the Perspectives Editorial Board.
“Hi ChatGPT, can AI really help in global health?”
In the last couple of years, AI has made remarkable progress, leading to creative solutions and innovations beyond just computer science. Nowadays, we can see AI’s influence in various fields and disciplines — education, business, marketing, and, remarkably, healthcare. More notably, I believe AI has potential in addressing some of the most pressing global health challenges we face today.
AI’s acute precision and machine-learning capabilities show promise as a tool in tracking and predicting infectious disease outbreaks, potentially offering a unique and crucial advantage in global health surveillance. For instance, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, some of you may have heard of the AI platform BlueDot. During the early stages of the pandemic, BlueDot made headlines for accurately forecasting the virus’s spread, before official warnings were issued by the World Health Organization (WHO), all through its AI-driven platform. BlueDot works by tracking large-scale media and data to both monitor and predict the spread of infectious diseases globally — essentially, it acts as an early warning system for potential epidemics, combining human expertise with computer analysis. At the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, BlueDot identified concerning trends and flagged Wuhan, China as a potential outbreak site. Notably, this warning was issued nine days before the World Health Organization released its first public statement. BlueDot — with its early warnings developed from global data — demonstrates AI’s power to detect threats faster than traditional methods. In hindsight, this could have given governments a head start in preparing response strategies and managing risk. Beyond COVID-19, AI has shown promise in tracking diseases like malaria and Ebola, where patterns in environmental changes, travel behavior, and healthcare data can reveal early signs of outbreaks. As AI continues to advance, its role in preventing and mitigating global health crises is expected to become even more vital.
Additionally, the potential of AI is exciting in global health in terms of access to and development of vaccines, surgical precision, and global medical collaboration. For instance, AI can be utilized to streamline vaccine research by identifying the most promising vaccine candidates and predicting how our immune systems will respond. Researchers at MIT used machine learning to design a potential mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 by identifying optimal antigen targets more rapidly than traditional methods. Similarly, platforms like DeepMind’s AlphaFold have accelerated drug and vaccine research by predicting protein structures with remarkable accuracy. This was particularly essential during the COVID-19 pandemic, where AI models helped fast-track vaccine designs. Moreover, in the operating room, novel robotic systems are giving surgeons a significant edge in improving precision, especially for complex procedures involving the brain and spine.
Perhaps one of the most important contributions of AI is its ability to boost collaboration, which is key for effective global health research and governance. With improved data-sharing platforms, researchers, doctors, and governments around the world can connect more efficiently, which can help speed up discoveries and improve healthcare access for all. It’s a powerful example of how technology is not only changing medicine, but also helping build a more connected and equitable global health landscape.
While AI has incredible potential in global health, it can also introduce new challenges. One major concern is accessibility. Developing and implementing AI solutions requires significant funding, which can create a gap between wealthier nations and regions with fewer resources. Western healthcare systems may have the means to adopt cutting-edge AI tools, while developing countries — particularly those in the Global South — may struggle to keep pace. If not approached thoughtfully and ethically, this imbalance could widen the gap between North and South and reinforce global healthcare inequalities rather than reduce them. Another critical challenge is accountability. While some platforms have taken steps toward transparency, many AI-driven decisions remain difficult to interpret. The logic behind how these programs reach conclusions is often complex or altogether inaccessible. Ensuring that these systems are accessible and open is essential when people’s lives are on the line. For AI to truly support global health improvements, it must be implemented with fairness, responsibility, and a focus on closing gaps — not creating new ones.
Ahoor Saleem
is a second-year undergraduate student, studying Anatomy & Cell Biology at McGill University. This year, Ahoor joined the Perspectives team as an Editor, driven by a passion for advancing discussions around global health. With a strong commitment to global health education, awareness, and equity, Ahoor has been involved in research on innovative healthcare tools and campus fundraising initiatives for diseases like Parkinson’s. Looking forward, Ahoor is eager to explore further education in global health, particularly in its potential to shape medicine and positively impact the community.