Two South African organisations have been selected to participate in Turn.io’s 2025 Chat for Health & AI Accelerator. Chosen from 400 international applications, AI Diagnostics and hearX Foundation are part of the 10 organisations that will scale AI‑enabled health services.
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The programme enables health organisations to scale AI-powered conversational services, expanding access to quality care in underserved settings.
Conversational, AI‑enabled care
Participants receive over $500,000 in value across Turn.io’s conversational technology, development support, and expert mentorship and guidance, delivered in partnership with IDinsight, culminating in a working AI-enabled solution by the end of the programme.
“The 400+ quality applications we received confirm a decisive shift toward conversational, AI‑enabled care. Our cohort will show how responsibly designed chat solutions can extend services at scale at a low cost,” said Lieze Langford, head of impact accelerators at Turn.io.
Focused health use cases can include onboarding and education, appointment management (reminders, confirmations, and follow-ups), chat-based telehealth and triage, medication adherence, visit and treatment preparation, and ongoing engagement to support behaviour change and retention, particularly in primary and community care.
The 24-week, three-phase programme will start in September and culminate in a Demo Day in January 2026.
Songbo Hu, Anna Barford and Anna Korhonen 29 Jul 2025 The phases include:
- Onboarding and Implementation: Service design sprints, platform onboarding, technical implementation, and early sustainability planning.
- Testing and Validation: Go‑live, A/B testing, user feedback, and real‑world data to refine both service and business model.
- Scaling and Sustainability: Finalise go‑to‑market and scale strategy, build investor‑ready materials, and present at Demo Day to funders and partners.
The 10 organisations were selected based on their scalability and sustainability, technical readiness to implement AI-enabled chat services, market access and stakeholder relationships, clear impact potential, and organisational capacity — with a preference for teams positioned to reach hundreds of thousands of users within 12 months.
The 2025 cohort has six organisations based in Africa, one in Latin America, two in Asia, and one with a global reach. Their work spans telehealth triage, medication adherence, patient education and prevention, and clinical decision support, with every organisation implementing WhatsApp-based AI solutions with multi-modal capabilities.
Each cohort participant will receive access to Turn.io’s technology suite, which includes the Health Desk (an AI-enhanced team inbox), Journeys (a no-code chatbot builder), multimodal AI, voice calling, and AI voice agents to improve accessibility where literacy or connectivity are barriers.
They’ll also receive expert mentorship across AI and conversational engineering, digital health and behaviour change, financial sustainability and business modelling, and strategic communications and go‑to‑market.
The programme also includes built-in testing, analytics, and continuous evaluation, as well as co-developed case studies with leading academic/industry partners.
Lastly, opportunities for further growth include introductions to funders and partners, as well as support to unlock national and regional scale routes.
Meet the 2025 cohort
- AI Diagnostics, health tech startup, South Africa
AI Diagnostics develops AI-enabled diagnostic tools, such as a digital stethoscope for frontline TB and respiratory screening. Through the Accelerator, it will pilot a WhatsApp integration for patient onboarding, education, and treatment adherence support in partnership with StopTB and nurse-led clinics.
- Cliniva, health tech startup, Kenya
Cliniva is a nurse-led hybrid healthcare model in Kenya, serving 54,000+ patients (80% women) with a focus on prevention and high patient retention. As part of the Accelerator, Cliniva will enhance its WhatsApp prevention assistant to help low-income African women make more informed health choices. It offers personalised tips, nudges, and prompts based on clinical history, behaviour, and preferences.
- Cuéntame, health tech startup, Mexico
Cuéntame is a digital B2B mental health platform serving more than 150,000 employees across 40+ companies in Latin America, with a mission to demolish every barrier to mental health in Latin America through a personalised, data-driven, and clinically effective platform that provides ROI for organisations. During the Accelerator, Cuéntame will expand its WhatsApp-based onboarding, psychoeducational journeys, and ongoing engagement tools, using AI-powered personalisation to enhance employee mental health and workplace resilience.
- doctHERs, social enterprise, Pakistan
doctHERs is revolutionising healthcare by reintegrating previously excluded female healthcare providers into an agile, gender-inclusive workforce and leveraging mobile health and telemedicine technologies to enhance healthcare access and outcomes, particularly for women and girls. Through the Accelerator, doctHERs plans to digitise its care model using Turn.io's technology, scaling impact for providers while ensuring a coordinated care journey that makes healthcare more accessible, personal, and seamless for patients.
- hearX Foundation, non-profit/NGO, South Africa
hearX Foundation advances accessible hearing care, with programmes supporting the adoption and sustained use of hearing aids in low-resource settings. During the Accelerator, it will scale a WhatsApp AI chatbot that provides personalised voice-note guidance and LLM-driven responses, strengthening hearing aid use and ongoing support.
- Helium Health, health tech startup, Nigeria
Helium Health is the leading digital health company accelerating Africa’s transition to a technology- and data-driven healthcare sector. During the programme, Helium Health will integrate the Turn.io tool into its electronic health records platform, HeliumOS, and its patient engagement app, HeliumDoc, to strengthen appointment management and follow-up care.
- MDaaS Global, health tech startup, Nigeria
MDaaS Global operates 23 diagnostic centres that connect low-income Nigerians to quality and affordable healthcare. Through the Accelerator, it will expand “Ask Beacon,” its AI-powered WhatsApp and web chatbot, to provide triage, medication support, and appointment management, reducing barriers to verified care facilities.
- OneDay Health, non-profit/NGO, Uganda
OneDay Health delivers affordable primary care through a network of nurse-led clinics serving remote communities. In the Accelerator, it will develop a WhatsApp-based LLM tool that guides nurses through flow-chart diagnostics while also supporting treatment adherence, triage, and clinical decision-making support.
- Peek Vision, social enterprise, United Kingdom
Peek Vision develops software and data intelligence to help NGOs, governments, and hospitals optimise eye health services. During the Accelerator, Peek will integrate WhatsApp and AI chatbots to enhance its training, enabling users to effectively implement its software and scale up its training activities to meet growing demand.
- Wysa, health tech start-up, US, UK and IndiaWysa combines AI and human-in-the-loop for 24/7 wellbeing support on WhatsApp. As part of the Accelerator programme, Wysa will enhance its WhatsApp-based interventions, refine conversational flows, and securely integrate AI into high-trust health systems.
The programme is supported by Johnson & Johnson Foundation, Mulago Foundation, and OpenAI.
