The Boston-based Patrick J. McGovern Foundation has announced grants totaling more than $5.8 million in support of efforts to accelerate digital health.

Grants will support innovative data- and AI-driven approaches around the world to advance digital transformation of health systems and health care. According to the foundation, digital technologies have the potential to expand coverage of services, support frontline practitioners, and empower individuals to have more agency in their health care, yet many countries direct no more than 1 percent of public health budgets toward digital health.

Recipients include D-tree International, which was awarded $427,324 to assist the government of Zanzibar in co-developing a governance framework for data as a global good; Duke Institute for Health Innovation, which will receive $555,056 in support of efforts to help clinical and operational decision makers audit, evaluate, and monitor AI systems in healthcare settings; Medtronic Global Health Foundation, which was awarded $500,000 for a collaboration with Health Builders and the Government of Rwanda to pilot a digitally enabled, community-based platform for managing diabetes and hypertension; Population Services International, which will receive $545,623 to introduce a combined AI-powered symptom checker and provide location services tool to low-income consumers in Vietnam; and the University of Chicago, Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence, which was awarded $250,000 to help Nightingale Open Science create open-sourcing, high-dimensional, cutting-edge medical datasets.

“While the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital technologies in the delivery of health care, there is critical work ahead to ensure those innovations help improve, not undermine, health equity,” said McGovern Foundation president Vilas Dhar. “With these grants, we are focused on building essential capacity to use data, digital tools, and artificial intelligence to design people-centered, accessible models of care.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images)