Rwanda is putting efforts into improving healthcare using data and artificial intelligence (AI) through the new National Health Intelligence Centre (NHIC) AI Lab. Launched in April, the initiative is part of the broader National Health Study Centre. It aims to harness real-time data to improve patient outcomes, optimise health financing, and drive innovation across the health sector. ALSO READ: AI in healthcare: Why Rwanda should innovate and not just consume “In the past, our data did not support real-time decision-making, and that came at the cost of lives. We now need real-time data to make decisions as situations unfold,” said Dr Muhammed Semakula, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Health, on the side-lines of the Africa HealthTech Summit in Kigali on October 13. He explained that the NHIC supports health institutions such as Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC), which implements health programs including HIV, malaria, and non-communicable diseases, and Rwanda Medical Supply, which manages health commodities. The centre also integrates data from community health workers, health centres, and hospitals to ensure that decisions are based on accurate, up-to-date information. At the community level, Rwanda has digitised the work of community health workers using Community EMR (cEMR), a digital health record system designed to digitise and manage patient information in a community setting, replacing multiple manual registers that previously captured only 5 percent of relevant data. ALSO READ: ICT minister on how Rwanda uses AI in healthcare, agriculture At primary and secondary healthcare levels, systems like E-Ubuzima and E-fiche track patients’ medical journeys from initial contact to discharge, allowing the NHIC to receive comprehensive, real-time data. “Whatever a community health worker is doing in real-time can now be seen at other levels of healthcare, and interventions can be provided immediately,” he said. The NHIC organises data into three structured layers: the bronze layer, the silver layer, and the gold layer, ensuring privacy while enabling analysts and data scientists to monitor trends, predict health risks, and guide national health strategies. AI at the heart of Rwanda’s health strategy The AI Lab focuses on predictive analysis and the development of AI-powered tools to support medical decisions. “We want Rwanda to be Africa’s centre of excellence for AI innovation in health. AI can help us address our limited human resources. With AI, we can provide better services even as we work to increase our health providers from 1.5 to 4.5 per thousand populations, as per SDG targets,” he said. ALSO READ: Can AI unlock Africa’s healthcare bottlenecks? The lab operates on four key pillars: infrastructure development, research and development, AI talent incubation, and validation and evaluation. The NHIC has established a committee of technical, clinical, and ethical experts to evaluate and certify AI tools for local use in partnership with Rwanda FDA. Training Africa’s next AI talent Through AI fellowships and incubators, Dr Semakula also said that the NHIC is also cultivating a new generation of African AI developers, creating solutions tailored to local health challenges. PhD students and researchers within the centre are working on various projects to ensure sustainability and practical application of AI in healthcare, he said. He emphasised that Rwanda is not just consuming AI technologies but also contributing to their development.
