India's AI tool spots 5,000+ disease outbreaks since 2022
India's National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has been using an AI tool called Health Sentinel to track disease outbreaks since April 2022.
Built by Wadhwani AI, it's flagged over 3,500 potential outbreaks by scanning more than 300 million news articles in 13 languages—catching over 95,000 unique health events so far.
How does Health Sentinel actually help?
Instead of people manually combing through newspapers, Health Sentinel uses AI to pick up unusual health events from media reports.
Experts at NCDC then double-check the alerts before passing them on to local health officials.
This switch has cut down manual work by a massive 98% and helps make sure real threats aren't missed.
Why does this matter?
Since launching, Health Sentinel has boosted outbreak detection by 150% compared to old-school methods.
In 2024 alone, it was behind almost all (96%) of the events published in India's national system.
That means faster responses and better protection for everyone—plus a big step forward in keeping up with global health standards.