A non-profit is using artificial intelligence to link blood donors

A partnership between Facebook and the Ministry of Health in Kenya has helped connect blood banks with blood donors. The process uses artificial intelligence and geo-location data to notify Facebook users who have signed up as blood donors when blood banks in their area are in need of donations.

In an effort to address online violence children face in the digital age, initiatives across several countries, including Spain, Romania, and Ukraine, are getting creative using theatre, media literacy training on AI and algorithms, anonymous reporting hotlines and classroom phone bans, among other strategies to help youth cope. The various initiatives have proven successful. For example, the school-wide phone ban in one Spain region resulted in a 27.42% decrease in cyberharassment cases between 2023-2024.

A data analyst who is a Microsoft-certified trainer uploads videos on social media teaching digital technology skills in the Yorùbá language. The videos are free to watch and break the language barrier that arises with most English-only tech information available online.

J Blood Match uses intelligence-enabled bots to match people in need of blood with registered donors. Registered users answer a series of prompts to determine their needs, the program identifies matches among a pool of registered donors, and once a match is accepted contact information is shared.

To help place refugees in cities, a new software program called "Annie" is sifting through large amounts of data and using its algorithm to make suggestions for where refugees are "most likely to be welcomed and find success."While the program is still in its preliminary stages, the idea of using data and an algorithm to help place refugees is gaining stream internationally.

Several hospitals are beginning to use artificial intelligence, like Chat GPT’s medical assistant Suzanne, to make cardiovascular medicine more accurate and effective. AI can detect illnesses that are hard to see with the human eye, interpret test results and make diagnoses quicker and help doctors provide more effective treatment to patients. Since AI emerged in healthcare in 2018, the FDA has approved about 700 AI and machine learning-enabled medical devices.

HopSkipDrive is a transportation company with an artificial intelligence tool that helps schools across the United States optimize their bus routes around driver shortages. The company uses a combination of traditional bus rides and passenger cars operated by its drivers to improve on-time arrival rates and reduce absenteeism.

BlueConduit, an analytics startup, applies statistical models to identify neighborhoods and households that might have lead pipes. The models include dozens of factors, such as the age of the home and proximity of other homes where lead has been found, to help predict likely locations of lead pipes and create a ranking by likelihood that cities can use to prioritize which pipes to examine. In Flint, MI, about 70% of the homes identified using the models had lead pipes, compared to about 15% of homes where excavations did not use the model. The company is working with organizations in dozens of other cities.

Researchers from Stanford University have developed a software that uses machine-learning algorithms to identify and flag urgent faxes about COVID-19 cases. While the project doesn't have complete accuracy, it has helped overwhelmed and overburdened health care workers at the health department in Contra Costa County, California work more efficiently.

Veterans Affairs' Reach Vet program uses an algorithm weighing 61 factors to flag veterans deemed at highest risk of suicide. While its results have not been shown to affect the suicide rate, it has more than doubled high-risk veterans' uses of V.A. services and been associated with a lower overall mortality rate. Built on an analysis of thousands of previous suicides in the V.A.'s system, Reach Vet assesses scores of facts from medical records, including some that are not obvious to humans trying to spot problems. Doctors then intervene and ensure the veteran has a suicide safety plan in place.