Project description
Smartphone app to spot skin diseases early in Africa
Skin-related neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are a major burden in sub-Saharan Africa, where limited healthcare access can delay diagnosis and treatment. These conditions often go undetected, worsening health outcomes in already vulnerable communities. In this context, the EU-funded SkincAIr project is tackling this head-on with an AI-powered mobile app designed to help front-line health workers identify skin NTDs early. The app will use machine learning for diagnosis, enable real-time disease tracking, and support better public health responses. Piloted in five countries (the DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal), SkincAIr combines local knowledge, ethical safeguards, and open-source design to ensure wide impact, scalability, and alignment with regional and global digital health strategies.
Objective
The SkincAIr project aims to develop an innovative AI-driven mobile application to support the early detection and of skin Neglected Tropical Diseases (skin NTDs) in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). NTDs significantly affect marginalized communities due to several factors, such as lack of trained healthcare staff and diagnostic tools. The project's objectives are: to improve the accuracy of Front-line Health Workers (FHW) of skin NTD identification, to create the largest public dataset of skin NTDs in the world (first in SSA), to reduce disease transmission through early diagnosis, to enhance real-time epidemiological surveillance, to enhance the knowledge of FHW, to develop novel AI models for skin disease monitoring, to ensure the digital solution is culturally tailored, to ensure compliance with clinical practices, ethical, legal aspects and participant rights, to ensure scalability and broad outreach of SkincAIr’s results, to advocate for greater awareness and policy support for NTDs
SkincAIr will equip FHW with an app capable of detecting skin NTDs using advanced machine learning techniques while preserving privacy through geolocation features. The app will facilitate real-time epidemiological surveillance, contributing to improved disease mapping and hotspot identification. The project will be implemented in five SSA countries: Kenya, Senegal, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Aligned with the Work Program, SkincAIr is anchored in the scope of Global Health EDCTP3 and regional strategies, targeting the highest demonstrated medical needs in SSA and addressing context-specific needs. It develops a solution with early-stage involvement of end users and implicated health services. The solution ensures seamless integration and interoperability, is sustainable, accessible, open-source, evidence-based, and compliant with data protection standards and global digital health public goods.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.2.1 - Health
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-JU-RIA - HORIZON JU Research and Innovation Actions
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-JU-GH-EDCTP3-2024-01-two-stage
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
28040 Madrid
Spain
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