Country of Residence
Nigeria
Age
19
Project title
AccessiHealth AI
Project Summary: Describe your project in one sentence
AccessiHealth AI bridges the massive healthcare gap for persons with disabilities in low-income settings. We provide an AI-powered platform featuring real-time assistive communication (translation, text-to-speech) and an opportunity discovery directory for accessible jobs, education, and services. Our goal is to ensure no one is excluded from critical healthcare simply because of how they communicate, empowering millions to navigate inaccessible systems confidently.
Website URL(s) or social media handles.
Project Category
My project is an existing project that I started
Project Stage
Pilot-Stage (We’ve tried an activity or two)
Founding Story: What was the spark that led you to start your project? What was the "Aha!" moment that led you to get started and see the potential for this to succeed?
As a clinical medical student in a Nigerian teaching hospital, I see the human cost of delayed healthcare daily. My 'Aha!' moment crystallized through the story of Amina, a young girl facing immense barriers to healthcare. Amina couldn't communicate effectively with healthcare providers, leading to a tragic misdiagnosis. I realized this wasn't an isolated incident—over 25 million people with disabilities in Nigeria face similar systemic exclusions. In low-income countries, less than 10% of people with disabilities receive necessary healthcare services. The spark was realizing that we cannot simply rely on overburdened hospitals to fix this. We needed to engineer a systemic bridge. I recognized that artificial intelligence could break down these communication barriers in real-time. This inspired me to create AccessiHealth AI: a platform to ensure that a patient's access to life-saving care and social services is never dictated by how they communicate.
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve? Why does it matter to you and your community?
Globally, 1.3 billion people live with a disability. In Nigeria alone, over 25 million people face significant, daily barriers to healthcare, education, and social inclusion. Despite these staggering numbers, millions are consistently left behind by systems not designed for them. The core problem is two-fold: First, severe communication barriers exist during critical healthcare interactions. When patients with speech, hearing, or language disabilities cannot communicate their symptoms, it leads to dangerous misdiagnoses and poor health outcomes. Second, there is a profound difficulty in discovering accessible opportunities and support networks. Access to vital resources is highly fragmented. This matters to my community because access to basic human rights—like health and education—should not depend on how a person communicates. When we exclude people with disabilities from the healthcare ecosystem, the entire community suffers from worsened health outcomes and deepened poverty.
Your Solution: How are you solving this problem? Share your specific solution.
AccessiHealth AI solves these systemic exclusions through a single, accessible digital platform built on two powerful pillars: Assistive Communication and Opportunity Discovery. First, we tackle the clinical bottleneck. Our platform provides AI-powered assistive communication tools—including real-time translation, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and pictorial support—designed specifically for healthcare interactions. This allows patients to confidently express their symptoms and understand provider instructions in accessible formats, bridging the communication gap during critical medical consultations. Second, we eliminate fragmented access to resources through our Opportunity Discovery directory. The platform actively helps users find, filter, and connect with accessible healthcare services, inclusive jobs, educational programs, and local advocacy networks. Instead of forcing users to navigate complex, inaccessible bureaucratic systems alone, our AI guides them directly to verified, inclusive opportunities. By combining clinical communication support with social opportunity discovery, AccessiHealth AI provides a holistic solution that empowers persons with disabilities to not only survive the healthcare system but to thrive in their communities.
Impact: How has your project created impact / made a difference so far? Or, if at an early stage, what will impact look like?
We are currently in the validated prototype phase, driven by rigorous early validation. We recently conducted structured surveys across Nigeria with 92 persons with disabilities and 66 healthcare professionals. The data is overwhelmingly positive: 98% of surveyed persons with disabilities reported a strong willingness to use the AccessiHealth AI platform, and 100% of surveyed healthcare professionals supported its integration into clinical settings to facilitate better communication. Looking forward, our impact will be measured by the reduction in misdiagnosis rates among users, the number of successful clinic visits facilitated by our AI, and the volume of users matched with inclusive educational and employment opportunities. Over the next two years, we aim to pilot the platform in major teaching hospitals and reach 5,000 active users, proving that tech-enabled inclusive healthcare is scalable in low-resource environments.
Your Innovation: What is different about your project compared to other programs or solutions already out there? How is your project new or innovative?
Our innovation lies in the intersectional design of our platform. Current market solutions are highly fragmented. There are standalone Assistive Communication apps (which lack healthcare-specific workflows), Healthcare Accessibility Tools (which do not provide social opportunity discovery), and General-Purpose AI Assistants (which are not designed with accessibility-centric standards for persons with disabilities). AccessiHealth AI is innovative because it uniquely combines communication support AND opportunity discovery within a single, accessibility-centric experience. We recognize that health does not happen in a vacuum—clinical health is directly tied to social determinants like education and employment. By offering real-time medical translation alongside a directory for inclusive jobs and support networks, we address the user's holistic needs. Furthermore, our business model innovates by utilizing a cross-subsidy approach: we target institutional subscriptions (hospitals, NGOs, and employers) to sponsor access, keeping the core platform affordable and accessible for the vulnerable end-users.
How many people are on your team?
4
Your team: What role(s) do your team members play? How do you share leadership with them?
Our core team comprises four people with a shared commitment to accessibility. I serve as Founder/CEO, bridging clinical medicine and health policy. Yusuf Bashirat (Co-Founder/CTO) drives technical strategy. Razaq Rotimi (Product Lead) brings 5+ years of full-stack engineering, and Ogunje Emmanuel (Operations Lead) scales community engagement. We share leadership by blending medical rigor with software engineering, ensuring every feature is clinically safe and technologically robust.
What’s Next: What are the next steps you plan to take to grow or strengthen your project over the next year? If your project is still in the idea stage, describe the steps you will take over the next three months to launch or begin developing it.
Over the next three to six months, our primary goal is to transition our validated prototype into a pilot-ready platform. First, we will refine our product development by completing the highest-priority assistive features (like offline text-to-speech) and improving accessibility UI/UX based on direct user feedback. Next, we will conduct structured, localized usability testing with our cohort of 92 persons with disabilities and 66 healthcare professionals to ensure the tool integrates seamlessly into fast-paced clinical environments. Finally, we are actively seeking $20,000 in pre-seed/grant funding to launch a formal pilot in selected Nigerian teaching hospitals and local government health centers. This pilot will allow us to measure real-world outcomes, refine our data-handling and privacy protocols, and establish a framework for scaling through institutional subscriptions and NGO partnerships.
How do you encourage other people to join your project or learn about the problem you’re working on? If you have a new idea, tell us how you will do this in the future.
I am applying this exact framework to AccessiHealth AI. To encourage others to join, we are building a 'Community Champions' program, empowering medical students, clinical peers, and disability rights advocates to act as on-the-ground ambassadors. By utilizing university networks and teaching hospital rounds, we educate future doctors on the critical importance of accessible communication in healthcare. We also host feedback sessions with disability organizations to ensure our end-users are co-creators of the platform, not just passive consumers. So far, we have engaged over 150 stakeholders in our validation phase, turning them into early adopters and vocal advocates for systemic inclusion.
