Promoting for health technologies powered by artificial intelligence

By supporting research projects that integrate AI into diagnosis and public health surveillance, the council is helping bridge hospital-based care with community-level health monitoring.

- By Ranz Elifred F. Valdez Science Research Specialist II, DOST-PCHRD

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) is steadily reshaping the country's healthcare landscape, offering transformative solutions across diagnostics, patient triage, and hospital operations.

Radiology departments are beginning to adopt AI tools that interpret X-rays and CT scans with remarkable accuracy. Telemedicine platforms now use chat-based systems to assess urgency in patient cases, while hospital administrators rely on predictive models to forecast admissions and streamline records management.

The Department of Science and Technology-Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (DOST-PCHRD), through its Digital and Frontier Technologies for Health Program (DFTH), is steering the country toward intelligent, tech-enabled health systems. By supporting research projects that integrate AI into diagnosis and public health surveillance, the council is helping bridge hospital-based care with community-level health monitoring.

Among the supported projects is the CHERISH project (A Retrospective Study on the Accuracy of AI-Powered Reading of Chest X-Rays in the Diagnosis of COVID-19 Pneumonia in a Tertiary Hospital), which utilizes AI to analyze chest X-rays and detect pneumonia, identifying whether the cause is COVID-19, bacterial, or viral. The model has demonstrated 100% sensitivity and 99% specificity. Through the CHERISH COVID-19 Detection App, radiologists can upload images, receive probability-based assessments, and share results with attending physicians, who then incorporate AI insights into their clinical evaluations.

On the other hand, the HealthPH project (HealthPH: Intelligent Disease Surveillance for Public Health using Social Media) uses AI to analyze social media posts written in Filipino and Cebuano for signs of emerging infectious diseases.