We spoke with Meredith Baker, Gavi’s Senior Manager of Private Sector Partnerships & Innovation, about our partnership. She talks about the focus and future of Gavi and what she thinks any social impact organization needs to have in place in order to tackle the world’s toughest challenges with AI and data science. We’re honored to work with Gavi, and share their story of the valuable work they do. Enjoy!
Immunization is foundational to universal health coverage and global health security, preventing numerous life-threatening diseases and saving millions of lives. Despite global advancements in vaccine technology and distribution, significant challenges across the vaccine deployment life cycle persist in reaching global immunization targets.
Digital innovations are essential for overcoming vaccine coverage gaps. These technologies offer opportunities to improve vaccine coverage, equity, and efficiency. However, with a rapidly changing digital landscape, health actors need to be aware of the potential of data-driven solutions to be a part of broader national eHealth strategies.
Thus, DataKind partnered with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi), and released a report, landscaping the potential of AI and data science tooling across vaccine deployment to advance coverage, equity, and efficiency. The outcome of an almost year-long partnership with Gavi, and funded by Wellcome, the report provides a comprehensive look into the present digital landscape and identifies impactful solutions, key gaps, and priorities for investment. The report’s findings offer a roadmap for leveraging digital innovation to achieve universal health coverage and vaccination coverage targets.
Check out Meredith’s interview below!
In what ways has the collaboration with DataKind influenced decision-making processes and priorities within Gavi regarding the use of AI and data science in vaccine deployment?
Gavi is keen to leverage AI-enabled solutions to transform the immunization sector, but we’re smart enough to know what we don’t know. With all the buzz around emerging technology and innovative approaches, the work we’ve done with DataKind and the report which we produced together is essential to helping the Alliance better understand the existing ecosystem, the potential opportunities, as well as the inherent risks for our partners. With this information, we’ll be able to make more informed investments across the vaccine deployment lifecycle and work with Gavi-supported countries, partners, and donors to ensure equitable access to the most promising and impactful solutions.
How do you see this work impacting the implementation and scaling of AI and data science interventions across vaccine deployment? Specifically, how might it help reduce vaccine coverage gaps and contribute to universal health coverage and global health security?
To improve immunization rates, we need to know who needs vaccines and which ones they need, and how to encourage more people to get them. We also want to generate demand in under-reached groups, and could, for instance, analyze social media data and other credible news sources to identify trends related to vaccines. When we know which vaccines to target to which communities, we then have to get them there safely. This will mean transforming outdated cold chains that work poorly in low-resource or remote settings.
It is also vital that we are better prepared for outbreaks, which means prioritizing access to preventative and follow-up vaccinations, particularly for under-immunized children in humanitarian or hard-to-reach contexts. There is the potential for machine learning algorithms to determine groups most likely to miss follow-up appointments, as well as automating the processing of follow-up appointment data to reduce the burden on healthcare providers.
The potential to apply and scale the solutions we’ve identified with DataKind is enormous, but we’ll need to work with Gavi-supported countries to ensure that the right solutions are prioritized and scaled and opportunities are not missed.
What are the ethical and technical considerations? What do you see as the main challenges and limitations? How can Gavi play a role in mitigating these?
For all of its potential, there are news articles every day about problems and risks with AI, from bias to hallucinations. These have real implications in people’s lives and can be a question of life and death when used in the health sector. These problems also lead people to mistrust any new technology using AI. We have seen and still see with vaccines what mistrust in a technology can mean for health, health systems, and ultimately for societies.
To address this, we need to have standards and norms, set by legitimate and credible institutions and then mechanisms in place for those to be implemented. Gavi will continue to leverage our convening power to drive these important conversations while investing in proven solutions as they become available, and countries request them.
How can fostering partnerships across public, private, and philanthropic sectors contribute to maximizing the utility of AI and data science in vaccine deployment?
The power of Gavi is in our Alliance, which brings our country partners together with donor governments, private sector, pharma, civil society organizations, and philanthropy to solve bottlenecks and create a more equitable world. As we see AI rapidly evolving in the private sector, we’ll need the power of all these partners to make sure these solutions are applied to the toughest challenges in vaccine deployment and across all markets – not just those with the most purchasing power.
Partnerships like this one with DataKind are a great example of how much we can achieve when we leverage our unique expertise as organizations and institutions to achieve common goals.
Meredith Baker is a self-proclaimed curious optimist with more than 15 years of global experience in technology for development and social impact across multiple sectors. In her current role at Gavi, she manages a portfolio of diverse private sector partnerships, including partners in the tech/digital health space, and she supports Gavi’s innovation strategy. Meredith has a Bachelor’s degree in French and Politics from New York University and an Executive Certificate in Social Impact Strategy from the University of Pennsylvania.
Images above courtesy of Gavi.
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Quick Links
- DataKind + Gavi Report: Leveraging AI and data science for equitable and efficient vaccine coverage
- Leveraging AI and data science applications for improved vaccine coverage
- At Davos, DataKind and World Leaders Talk Technology Innovations for Improved Vaccination Rates
- Announcing DataKind’s Data Observation Toolkit as a Digital Public Good
