WHO CIO explains how AI can boost global health outcomes

As CIO of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Bernardo Mariano is responsible for the IT strategy at a United Nations agency that aims to attain the highest possible level of health for all citizens in its 194 member states. His key objectives are to deliver the WHO's global strategy on digital health and to provide guidelines to countries on how to navigate their digital transformation journeys. "We will do that by bringing together all the national regulatory agencies from the countries that have them and then start discussing issues such as AI regulation and sharing our experiences," Mariano tells CIO UK from the AI Everything conference in Dubai. "Some agencies have already implemented digital strategies and others have not, so we have to cross-fertilise ideas among the different regulatory agencies to make sure that they all are able to deal with and handle the added power but also maintain the quality of the healthcare existing ecosystem." To help its member states to achieve this, the WHO recently released its first recommendations for digital health tech use. They outline how nations can use tech to improve the health of citizens by providing proper training, securing data and coordinating systems with other digital health resources, while taking into account infrastructural limitations.