Public Health Landscape

AI in Telehealth: The New Game Changers

AI and Health | June 2025

AI transforms health-seeking from an ordeal to a convenience for a busy city-dweller and a boon for those with mobility issues or living in remote areas. A few taps of a finger can schedule a consultation, and visiting a physician becomes as effortless as sitting before a TV. Around 75% of healthcare organizations have found that integrating AI into their operations improved their ability to treat diseases effectively while reducing staff burnout.

Since physical examinations contribute to only 11% of the diagnostic process, with the patient’s history making up 76%, AI has become a valuable tool for helping medical professionals assess and interpret patient data more efficiently. AI algorithms can rapidly process large datasets, allowing medical professionals to identify potential health risks early – often before they are detectable by traditional methods.

Telehealth and telemedicine is a booming market, projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 23.2% between 2023 and 2028 as technology advances, regulations evolve, and patients and healthcare professionals accept telemedicine as a safe, economical and viable choice. AI is dramatically re-drawing the telehealth landscape in the areas of prediction, diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of diseases like heart disease, cancer, respiratory disorders and diabetes, which account for nearly 75% of deaths worldwide each year.

Continue reading “AI in Telehealth: The New Game Changers” ›

Firestorms | May 2025

Malik Afegbua: Storytelling at the Speed of Code

Malik Afegbua, born in Nigeria, considers himself a filmmaker, a visual artist, and a creative technologist. Afegbua is globally recognized for his ground-breaking use of artificial intelligence in storytelling.

A business-school graduate from the University of Surrey, he turned his focus to the creative realm in 2011 after receiving a Canon camera. This gift was the beginning of his career in photography, filmmaking and virtual storytelling. Today, he is the CEO of Slickcity Media, a Lagos‑based studio producing commercials, documentaries, VR experiences, and AI‑driven art for clients like Meta, Marvel Studios, IBM, American Express, and Cadbury.

His breakout project, The Elder Series, also known as “Fashion Show for Seniors”, emerged in early 2023 when he used technology to depict elegantly dressed older adults walking a runway – imagining aging as stylish, powerful, and full of color. This collection went viral worldwide, earning praise from the World Health Organization during its Decade of Healthy Aging initiative.

Continue reading “Malik Afegbua: Storytelling at the Speed of Code” ›

Image of Dr. Regina Barzilay — Photo credit: Lillie Paquette | MIT School of Engineering

AI and Health | June 2025

Dr. Regina Barzilay: From Patient to Pioneer

Dr. Regina Barzilay, a professor at MIT and a pioneer in artificial intelligence (AI), is not only moving the needle in science and technology – she is rebuilding the compass. Her work not only advances medical technology but also challenges how we think about diagnosis, treatment, and the human experience behind each.

Barzilay’s journey into medical AI did not begin in a lab. It began in a hospital room in 2014, when she received a breast cancer diagnosis. For most, that moment signals a personal battle. For her, it became something more. It became the beginning of a mission to reimagine cancer care through machine learning.

Continue reading “Dr. Regina Barzilay: From Patient to Pioneer” ›

AI and Health | June 2025

Six Ways AI is Transforming Healthcare

With 4.5 billion people currently without access to essential healthcare services and a health worker shortage of 11 million expected by 2030, AI has the potential to help bridge that gap and revolutionize global healthcare.

It could even get us back on track to meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal of achieving universal health coverage by 2030.

But while the technology is rapidly developing, healthcare is “below average” in its adoption of AI compared to other industries, according to the World Economic Forum’s white paper, The Future of AI-Enabled Health: Leading the Way.

Continue reading “Six Ways AI is Transforming Healthcare” ›

AI and Health | June 2025

Health care technology trends 2025

The Age of Firestorms

Firestorms | May 2025

Dr. Roslyn Prinsley never imagined that stepping outside her home in Canberra would feel like walking into a smoke-filled abyss. But during Australia’s devastating bushfire season in 2019-2020, even in places untouched by flames, the air was so thick with smoke that breathing felt impossible.

“I asked myself, what are we doing here in the 21st century? We can’t actually go outside and breathe fresh air in one of the cleanest countries in the world,” she remembers thinking. “We can’t let this keep going.”

Dr. Roslyn Prinsley is the Head of Disaster Solutions at the Australian National University’s Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions (ICEDS). Finding innovative ways to fight wildfires is part of her daily work – a task that has become more urgent than ever as wildfires grow increasingly frequent in Australia and across the globe due to climate change.

Wildfires are projected to rise 30% by the end of 2050, according to a report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and its partner GRID-Arendal.

One of the recent wildfires in California became the most destructive in Los Angeles history, killing at least 29 people—a number expected to rise—and reducing over 10,000 homes to ash. A perfect set of environmental factors such as long-term drought, preceding heavy rainfall, and hurricane-force Santa Ana winds combined at the worst possible moment.

All of this turned the regular wildfire into what’s called a firestorm.

Continue reading “The Age of Firestorms” ›

Firestorms | May 2025

Bryan David Griffith: Art Born from Fire, Fueled by Purpose

Bryan David Griffith tackles big questions with simple materials. His art examines the tension between nature and culture, chaos and control, and life and loss. His engineering background brings a problem-solver’s mindset to his creative process, often inventing new techniques to serve each concept.

Griffith didn’t take a typical path into the art world. While studying at the University of Michigan, he found a beat-up photo manual, built a darkroom, and started experimenting. Later, disillusioned with a consulting job and its environmental impact, he quit, bought a van, and hit the road to become an artist.

Continue reading “Bryan David Griffith: Art Born from Fire, Fueled by Purpose” ›

Credit: Lido Vizzutti for The New York Times

Firestorms | May 2025

Dr. Mark Finney: Changing How We Fight (and live with) Fire

Dr. Mark Finney is a Senior Scientist and Research Forester with the U.S. Forest Service at the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory. With a Ph.D. in wildland fire science from UC Berkeley, Finney has spent decades exploring fire as both an ecological force and a physical process. His work has laid the foundation for many of the wildfire behavior models used today across the country.

Finney is a strong advocate for rethinking traditional fire suppression strategies. He emphasizes the need to let “good fire” play its role in the landscape, using tools like prescribed burns and targeted fuel treatments to prevent more extreme fires down the line. His research has revealed that long-held beliefs about how fires spread, such as the role of radiant heat, are often incorrect.

Continue reading “Dr. Mark Finney: Changing How We Fight (and live with) Fire” ›

Firestorms | May 2025

A New Kind of Urban Firestorm

Everything around Walker Savage was smoke. Smoke and embers and broken tree limbs and the relentless roar of the wind. Wearing a respirator and goggles from his woodworking studio, he sprayed his garden hose into the gale, hoping to wet the walls and porch of his 99-year-old adobe house enough to keep them from igniting.

But then he saw the flames come surging down the mountain above his home in east Altadena, California: “It was like an avalanche,” Savage said. “But not of snow — it was of fire.”

More than a week later, Savage is still trying to wrap his mind around the Eaton Fire, which killed at least 16 people, destroyed an estimated 7,000 structures and is still only 45 percent contained. The flames moved faster than firefighters could fight them, reaching deep into the suburb to scorch houses well outside the state-designated risk zone.

Continue reading “A New Kind of Urban Firestorm” ›

Firestorms | May 2025