About WHO
Our primary role is to direct and coordinate international health within the United Nations system. Our main areas of work are health systems; health through the life-course; noncommunicable and communicable diseases; preparedness, surveillance and response; and corporate services.Activities by WHO
Using Social Media Tools to Monitor and Fight the COVID-19 Infodemic
AfricaThis project has two components. First, it conducts social media listening exercises in Africa to understand conversations related to COVID-19 and poliovirus. Second, it supports research to test interventions to reduce vaccine hesitancy among social media users using machine learning.
Activity Type Research/Reports/AssessmentsAwareness/AdvocacyFocus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health (FG-AI4H)
Global Not ApplicableThe FG-AI4H was run from 2018 to 2023 as a collaboration between ITU and WHO and pioneered a standardized assessment framework for the evaluation of AI-based methods for health, diagnosis, triage and treatment decisions. It developed 36 deliverables providing developers guidance under four pillars: (1) ethics, (2) regulations, (3) technology and (4) clinical evaluation and 15 use cases. Its work is continued under the Global Initiative on AI for Health co-organized by ITU, WHO and WIPO, expanding the guidance to a wider audience, countries and regulators in particular.
Activity Type Research/Reports/AssessmentsPolicy/Regulatory GuidanceNetworks/Mentorship/ExchangePulseSatellite: A collaboration tool using human-AI interaction to analyse satellite imagery
Africa, Asia and the Pacific BangladeshSomalia
PulseSatellite is a collaborative satellite image analysis tool that leverages neural network models that can be retrained on-the-fly and adapted to specific humanitarian contexts and geographies. The tool has models for mapping structures in refugee settlements, roof density detection, and flood mapping.
We are also working closely with UNOSAT to develop benchmark datasets for shelter (refugee camp) mapping, building footprint detection and damage assessment. We plan to use these to test many of the available well trained and top-performing models, but in the context of UN-focused datasets (e.g. with more of a Global South and development context than many of the standard machine learning benchmarks) and make this available as a service to the UN system.
Operational contexts are rapidly changing, meaning that AI models may not always perform well. Through using a human-in-the-loop approach we have found that models can be adapted to such changing settings, however, this still requires (sometimes significant) manual intervention from analysts.
UN DataA
GlobalThe UN Data platform is being modernized to improve access to authoritative statistical data, enhance search and analytics, and enable data interoperability. It supports natural language search using LLM technologies and is being made "AI-ready" by harmonizing concepts for semantic integration.
Activity Type Infrastructure/Systems DevelopmentAI Tools/SolutionsResearch/Reports/Assessments