Project Mentor: Professor Eric Obeysekare, Computer Science and Engineering
Continuing Fellows:
Natalie Kam ‘27
Vrushti Patel '26
Gabriela Quinteros '27
Trang Tran '27
Juliana Magarelli '27
2025 Impact Fellows:
Maisy Earl ‘27
Vasanthavel Jeeva Kumararaja ‘27
Malayna Leopold ‘26
Evan Mazor ‘27
Kudakwashe Mundove '26
Project Description:
AISHA started with a simple idea: use a smart-speaker like Amazon Alexa to provide critical medical knowledge to health workers in low-resource settings.
There are 26 times fewer healthcare workers per capita in Sierra Leone than in high-income countries. These workers often have limited training and low access to reliable health information, which results in delayed care and preventable complications. AISHA is uniquely positioned to transform how healthcare workers interface with medical information, increasing the quality of care and improving patient outcomes.
In 2025, we developed 10 offline devices based on Raspberry Pi, which we are currently piloting at 8 sites in Sierra Leone. This new device uses a custom-trained voice model to support the local language, Krio, and stores its reliable knowledge base on-device in order to function fully offline. This allows it to provide real-time answers as well as interactive study sessions for healthcare workers to improve clinical knowledge and decision making.
During 2025 fieldwork, we built important connections with the Ministry of Health which is crucial for scaling up the pilot phase of the venture. Continued innovation on the device side is also important as we look to add a battery, improve content generation systems, and continue data collection of Krio voice to reach 500 hours and robust voice models.
We are looking for thinkers and builders who share our vision of accessible health information for underserved communities. We welcome students from all majors, computer science, engineering, product design, public health, and beyond to contribute skills and ideas. If any aspect of AISHA excites you, please reach out to learn more and get involved.
Follow AISHA on LinkedIn.
