Digital Innovation and AI
Reliable data on why people die is fundamental to public health. Vital Strategies is harnessing digital innovation and AI to close critical gaps in civil registration and vital statistics systems globally.
Counting the Dead to Help the Living: The Data Gap Digital Tools Can Help Close
In many low- and middle-income countries, most deaths are never assigned a cause that can inform policy, leaving health systems without the evidence to act. AI can help close this gap.
Globally, just one third of countries meet World Health Organization standards for high-quality mortality data, while about half have low or very low-quality or no data. Of the estimated 61 million deaths globally in 2023, only one third were reported with cause-of-death information.
Vital Strategies works with governments across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East to strengthen the foundations of civil registration and vital statistics, systems that assign a cause to each recorded death. Increasingly, that work includes the careful, contextual application of digital innovation and AI to improve what these systems can do.
AI alone cannot compensate for weak systems. It can only build upon digitized workflows, compatible registries, defined decision pathways and accountable governance. This is why our digital innovation work is grounded in foundational system strengthening, government ownership and use cases driven by public health priorities, rather than technology in search of a problem.
Digital Innovation in the CRVS Program
The Cause of Death Determination Assistant (CODA) initiative is a three-year, consortium-led effort to develop and test an AI-powered tool with novel capabilities to help public health and healthcare workers ascertain individual causes of death more accurately and rapidly across a variety of settings. CODA will synthesize information from family interviews, clinical records, surveillance data and diagnostic results to support timely, evidence-based cause-of-death determinations. It is being developed for use at both facility and community levels, with rigorous testing at centers of excellence in Africa and South Asia.
CODA is just one example of how Vital Strategies is applying digital innovation and AI across multiple points in the mortality data pipeline—from the moment a death is reported through the production of national statistics and cause-of-death analyses.
We also support countries to adopt automated mortality coding tools using ICD (International Classification of Diseases—the WHO’s global standard diagnostic tool for epidemiology, health management, and clinical purposes) that improve the consistency and timeliness of cause-of-death classification, and to embed routine data quality monitoring into national systems. Together, these tools help governments undertake the digital transformation of mortality data systems, producing data that is faster, more accurate and more actionable.
Building AI for Impact
AI works in public health when it is built upon reliable, compatible, government-owned systems. Every digital innovation we support is anchored in the principle of meeting countries where they are.
CODA: An AI-Powered Tool for Cause of Death Determination
CODA is a three-year consortium initiative, led by Vital Strategies, to develop and test an AI-powered tool to strengthen cause-of-death data in low- and middle-income countries.
