Artificial intelligence for health emergencies: WHO advances public health intelligence and surveillance through innovation

10 December 2025, Cairo, Egypt - Last week in Amman, the World Health Organization's (WHO) Regional Health Emergencies Programme (WHE) convened the Region's first workshop to launch the All-Hazards Information Management (AIM) Toolkit and build artificial intelligence (AI) literacy for emergency information management.

Led by WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean - with support from the Berlin Hub and WHO headquarters - the initiative signals a new phase in emergency information management, with a focus on speed, consistency and responsible use of AI.

The workshop brought together representatives from 20 countries across the Region, including ministries of health, WHO regional and country office teams and technical experts in AI and health information systems. Participating partner organizations included the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), the Robert Koch Institute, the American University of Beirut, Qatar Charity, Jordan's National Center for Security and Crises Management (NCSCM), Regional Foreign Aid (RFA), and the Gulf, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia Centres for Disease Prevention and Control.

The AIM Toolkit is designed to make emergency information management faster, clearer and more consistent. It streamlines the production of core emergency information products, including rapid risk assessments, response plans, monitoring tools and situation reports.

Over the course of the workshop, participants reviewed the products end to end, stress-tested the templates and workflows and provided detailed feedback that will guide refinement and regional rollout. Several countries expressed strong interest in beginning national adoption.

A major component of the workshop was the AI literacy programme, delivered jointly with ECDC. Sessions focused on practical skills for emergency settings, including responsible deployment and use of AI tools, AI ethics and governance, validation of outputs, quality assurance and understanding where AI can add value and where human analysis remains essential. The combination of AIM Toolkit technical review with applied AI skills sessions was well received by all groups.

"This workshop is a milestone," said Dr Thomas Mollet, WHE Programme Area Manager for Intelligence, Surveillance and Outbreak Management at the Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean. For the first time, we are pairing an AI-enabled information management platform with the practical skills countries need to use these technologies wisely. The AIM Toolkit may be an Regional Office innovation, but this week showed that countries are ready to take it forward."

A key focus of the week was ensuring that participants across ministries of health, WHO teams and partner organizations have the skills and confidence to use AI safely and consistently in emergency information workflows.

"We need to set a common understanding, a common language, between public health and AI experts. Moreover, we need to look at our needs and understand our problems, and seek solutions that can solve them," said Dr Laura Espinosa, epidemic intelligence expert at ECDC.

Participants outlined clear next steps. These include finalizing the templates, preparing a starter package for early adopters, establishing a regional quality assurance mechanism and SOPs and launching a regional AI community of practice to support continued peer exchange. Follow-up virtual clinics will provide additional support to countries preparing for rollout.