CMED Health receives Grand Challenge Grant

CMED Health announced on Monday that it received a Grand Challenges Grant – an initiative fostering innovation to solve pressing global health and development problems and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

CMED Health will pursue an innovative global health and development research project focused on Catalysing Equitable Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use, titled Susastho.ai: an AI-enabled solution for adolescents in Bangladesh, read a press release on Monday.  

When harnessed equitably and responsibly, AI has incredible potential to help solve some of the world’s toughest challenges and reduce global inequity. Supporting AI research in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) will help ensure that AI technology is tailored to local health, education, agriculture and other contexts and designed with the needs of the world’s most vulnerable at the centre.

The project aims to address adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (ASRHR) and Mental Health (MH) challenges in Bangladesh and achieve SDG goal 3.7 by overcoming societal taboos and limited access to information and care. The solution involves an open-source multilingual AI engine integrated into the existing digital healthcare platform "SuSastho", providing health education, screening, referral, doctor consultation and data analytics through an AI engine, referral engine and stakeholder dashboard. The project plans to conduct beta testing, seek clinical validations and ensure cultural appropriateness through consultative workshops. The next step is to expand the focus to other health issues and scale up to similar socio-economic regions.

CMED Health’s project is one of nearly 50 Grand Challenges Catalyzing Equitable Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use grants announced by the Gates Foundation to support LMICs in harnessing AI’s power for good and to solve the urgent need for LMIC participation in the co-creation process of this technology as it rapidly evolves. The project’s findings will contribute to building an evidence base for testing AI large language models (LLMs) that can fill wide gaps in access and equitable use of these tools. Each of these grants represents an opportunity to solve or mitigate a real challenge experienced by communities, researchers and/or governments in low- and middle-income countries.

To receive funding, CMED Health and other Grand Challenges winners submitted their concepts which outlined their bold ideas in response to the Catalyzing Equitable Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use request for proposals. More than 1,300 proposals were submitted from around the world.