Evidence of AI in Health (EVAH) Initiative - J-PAL and APHRC

Under the Real World Evidence Platform (RWEP), J-PAL will design and deliver a competitive funding process for randomized evaluations in low- and lower- middle income countries that: 1) examines whether clinical AI tools improve real-world health outcomes; 2) tests innovations that increase effective AI tool adoption, use, and integration into health systems; and 3) advances methodological innovations to ensure evaluations keep pace with AI development. J-PAL will manage the portfolio for project success. J-PAL will develop a rigorous, policy-relevant evaluation pipeline by cultivating research partnerships through matchmaking and project development, two evaluation incubator workshops, and a regional scholars program. J-PAL will enable RWEP evidence use nationally and regionally through partnerships integrating evidence into partners’ initiatives, scaling support, and evidence synthesis and dissemination. Within Africa, the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) will be a close partner for advancing RWEP’s goals. We describe expected areas for collaboration below, and activities that APHRC will lead independently including i) developing an atlas of AI tools in Africa, ii) conducting regulatory scoping to document policies and frameworks on AI governance, adoption and evaluation, iii) additional evaluation capacity building for African researchers, and iv) evidence dissemination at institutional and continental levels.