Half of the world’s population has limited or no access to healthcare. Each year, 100 million people fall into poverty due to health shocks. In many places, visiting a medical facility means hours of travel, out-of-pocket expenses, missed days of income, and navigating varied price and quality ranges of healthcare providers. Women, children, and older people face more difficulties, often needing permission or a companion for the journey.

Intelehealth is solving last-mile access to primary healthcare by providing AI-driven diagnosis and virtual care delivery to rural communities in underserved regions. Working with government, NGOs, and existing communities of healthcare workers, the organisation connects patients and frontline healthcare workers in rural areas with remote doctors to provide quality medical advice and possibly treatment, thereby expanding healthcare access without requiring travel. They mainly do this through their AI assistant – Ayu, which contains 150+ evidence-based medical protocols, delivered in English, Arabic, Russian and 13 Indian languages. Through the platform, patients answer basic information and diagnostics questions before connecting with a remote doctor for a tele-consultation and booking follow-up sessions where needed. 

Intelehealth has so far facilitated 4 million teleconsultations provided by remote doctors and over 428,802 health service consultations by frontline health workers. Their interventions have led to a 70 per cent reduction in distances travelled by community members – distances they would have walked, cycled, or taken public transport for, usually in bad health, to access primary healthcare. Through Intelehealth and their partners’ work, there has been a dramatic reduction in the time taken to access healthcare, the costs incurred, and a consistent rise in the quality of services accessed.