August 2025: WEO's Response to the WHO's Global Initiative on AI for Health

WEO Responds to WHO’s Global Initiative on Artificial Intelligence for Health

The World Endoscopy Organization is pleased to share a new commentary published on behalf of the WEO Artificial Intelligence Committee in the journal Digestive Endoscopy. This article, authored by Nayantara Coelho-Prabhu, Purnima Bhat, Rakesh Kalapala, Junaid Mushtaq, Hisao Tajiri, and Yuichi Mori, addresses the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Initiative on Artificial Intelligence for Health.

While AI technologies have demonstrated significant potential to improve diagnostic accuracy and workflow efficiency in high-resource healthcare environments, their adoption in low- and middle-income countries faces multiple barriers—including limited infrastructure, economic constraints, regulatory complexities, and insufficient training. The commentary underscores how these challenges risk exacerbating existing disparities in healthcare quality if not carefully addressed.

To bridge these gaps, the WEO advocates for tailored, region-specific strategies such as the development of affordable and accessible AI tools (including mobile and offline applications), creation of localized datasets reflecting prevalent diseases, simplified and flexible regulatory frameworks, and strengthened workforce capacity through education and training. The article highlights the critical role of WEO’s global training networks and encourages collaboration between governments, clinicians, industry partners, and international organizations to ensure AI’s responsible and equitable integration in endoscopy worldwide.

Read the full commentary here.