The most important question about healthcare AI in the Global South is no longer whether the technology will arrive. It already has. The more consequential question is what happens after it does.

This report, produced by HealthTechAsia, examines the changing role of artificial intelligence in health systems across emerging and developing economies, bringing together themes explored through HealthTechAsia’s Policy Lens series and extending them into a broader framework covering technological capability, institutional capacity, infrastructure, regulation, patient safety, and technological agency.

What the report covers

The report examines healthcare AI across India, Southeast Asia, and the Gulf, and proposes a six-dimension framework for judging institutional readiness. It covers:

• The gap between technological capability and institutional capacity to govern it
• How AI shifts healthcare from episodic treatment toward continuous prediction
• Who governs AI systems when responsibility is distributed across regulators, vendors, and institutions
• The infrastructure (cloud, data, connectivity) beneath AI-enabled health systems
• Patient safety, automation bias, and the boundary between consumer wellness tech and medical devices
• Practical recommendations for regulators, health systems, investors, and technology companies

Authors

Matthew Brady, Founder & Editor, HealthTechAsia
Vishnu Narayan, Contributing Policy Editor & Non-Resident Fellow, HealthTechAsia