Accra has Grown into an Important AI Hub for Africa

Darlington Akogo is the founder and chief executive of minoHealth AI Labs, an AI for health company specialising in such areas as radiology and microscopy. He started the company in 2016 while living in Europe and returned to Ghana the next year, aiming to deploy deep learning (DL) to aid hospital diagnoses for diseases from diabetes to breast cancer. “ In healthcare, showcasing AI’s potential in medicine and biomedicine has been important in attracting stakeholders. We produced our first paper on applying AI to nutrition and dietetics in early 2018. A little later, biomedical engineer Xavier Palmer joined minoHealth AI Labs and we published papers on AI’s application to such areas as 3D bioprinting and regenerative medicine, cancer research and immunology. We formed research partnerships with London’s Imperial College and others to apply AI and, broadly, digital diagnostics to help combat diseases like malaria. Our consortium support has come from bodies such as the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the UK government’s major funder of clinical, public health and social care research.

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