public health
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.
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.
AI in Telehealth: The New Game Changers
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.
Health care technology trends 2025
What is the future of AI in health care? What is the future of RPM? Is telehealth increasing or decreasing? How can AI reduce physician burnout?
This video from the American Medical Association, featuring a discussion between Margaret Lozovatsky, MD, vice president of Digital Health Innovations, and Todd Unger, CXO, answers all of these questions.
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.
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.
The Age of Firestorms
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.
Inside the L.A. Firestorm
The 2025 LA Wildfires were among the most destructive and costly in U.S. history, driven by a combination of shifting climate patterns and growing development in fire-prone areas. As these types of fires become more common, it raises important questions about how we prepare for and respond to future risks. In this PBS video, experts explore the factors behind the firestorm and what can be done to reduce the impact of similar events going forward.
Reuben Wu: Shedding New Light on the World
Reuben Wu, a multidisciplinary artist who utilizes aerial lighting with drones and long-exposure photography, to tell compelling stories about the world we inhabit.
Wu has helped redefine contemporary landscape photography, and his work is featured in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the MoMA.
Drones vs. Mosquitoes: Fighting malaria in Malawi
In the middle of a muddy field next to a reservoir in north-western Malawi, a team of scientists are hard at work. Boxes of equipment lie scattered around a patch of dry ground, where a scientist programmes an automated drone flight into a laptop perched on a metal box. The craggy peak of Linga Mountain (‘watch from afar’ in the local language) looms over the lake, casting its reflection in the water.
With a high-pitched whirr of rotor blades, the drone takes off and starts following the shoreline, taking photos as it goes. Once the drone is airborne, the team switch from high-tech to low-tech mode. They collect ladles, rulers and plastic containers and squelch through mud until they reach the water’s edge.