Project Mentor: Professor Eric Obeysekare, Computer Science and Engineering

 

Continuing Fellows:
Evan Mazor ‘27
Maisy Earl ‘27
Malayna Leopold ‘26

 

2026 Impact Fellows: 

Olivia Bellinzoni '29
Nora Kerrigan '29
Henry Knight '28
Maximilian Nussbaum '27
Kemith Perera '28

 

Project Description:

 

AISHA started with a simple idea: use a smart speaker like Amazon Alexa to give health workers in low-resource settings instant access to critical medical knowledge.

Sierra Leone has roughly 26 times fewer healthcare workers per capita than high-income countries. Many of these workers have limited training and little access to reliable health information, which leads to delayed care and preventable complications. AISHA puts trusted medical guidance within reach at the point of care, helping health workers make better decisions and improving outcomes for their patients.

In 2025, we moved beyond commercial smart speakers and built 10 offline devices based on Raspberry Pi, now being piloted at 8 sites in Sierra Leone. Each device uses a custom-trained voice model that understands Krio, the local language, and stores a vetted knowledge base on-device so it works fully offline. Health workers can ask questions and get real-time answers, or use interactive study sessions to strengthen their clinical knowledge. That year’s fieldwork also built key relationships with Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Health, which are crucial for scaling beyond the pilot phase.

In 2026, the team added a battery, redesigned the case, and continued training our Krio model so AISHA can operate in places without reliable power or internet. Fieldwork that year deepened our existing pilots and partnerships and established new ones with several universities and nursing schools for longer-term educational pilots. In collaboration with a computer science capstone team, we’re continuing to collect Krio voice data and train models, working toward 500 hours of recordings for robust speech recognition.

We’re looking for thinkers and builders who share our vision of accessible health information for underserved communities. We welcome students from every major, including computer science, engineering, product design, and public health. If any part of AISHA excites you, reach out to learn more and get involved.

Follow AISHA on LinkedIn or visit heyaisha.com.