HÀ NỘI — Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced a five-year, US$100 million commitment to provide artificial intelligence (AI), agentic services and cloud infrastructure to healthcare organisations worldwide, including those in Việt Nam, to help expand access to healthcare and address gaps in medical services and research.

Under the AWS Health Impact Initiative (HII), non-profit organisations, Government agencies, research institutions, healthcare providers and technology companies in Việt Nam can apply for support to develop and scale technology-based healthcare solutions.

The initiative comes as AI is increasingly used to accelerate diagnoses, streamline clinical workflows and analyse large volumes of medical data. However, high adoption costs remain a major obstacle for healthcare organisations, particularly those helping underserved communities.

HII builds on AWS's previous Health Equity Initiative launched in 2021, which provided $60 million worth of technology support to more than 400 organisations over five years. An independent survey of previous beneficiaries found that 60 per cent identified cost as the main barrier to cloud adoption, with most citing AWS credits as their top priority.

For Việt Nam, the initiative could help address disparities in access to healthcare, particularly in rural and remote areas.

The country had approximately 14 doctors per 10,000 people in 2024, below its target of 19 by 2030 under the National Health Facility Network Master Plan. Expanding healthcare capacity will require not only more medical professionals, but also technologies that enable existing medical teams to serve more patients.

Demand for technology-enabled healthcare is also emerging. A recent study found that 58.6 per cent of Vietnamese respondents were willing to use AI-supported healthcare services.

HII will focus on three areas: expanding access to quality healthcare, advancing women's and children's health and improving access to healthy food.

The first area supports AI and cloud solutions to improve diagnostic capacity and the availability and quality of healthcare, particularly in rural and remote communities and low- and middle-income countries.

The second focuses on inclusive medical research, improved health data and innovations in diagnosis and treatment for women and children, while the third supports projects using technology to improve food distribution, forecast food security risks and expand access to nutritious food.

Vietnamese hospitals, healthcare non-profits, research institutions and health-tech companies can work with their AWS account teams or apply directly through the initiative's public portal.

Existing AWS-supported projects demonstrate how cloud and AI technologies can be applied to healthcare and social services. These include Care 2 Communities, which provides primary healthcare to 350,000 people through community clinics in Haiti, and Admera Health, which has expanded genomic sequencing for research into tuberculosis and rare diseases.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation in India also uses AWS technology to optimise kitchen operations and food distribution, supporting school meal programmes for more than 2.3 million children daily.

"Agents and AI are revolutionising health services, but these transformative technologies too often don't reach the communities that need them most, unless organisations know how to access and deploy them," said Dr Rowland Illing, chief medical officer and director of Healthcare and Life Sciences at AWS.

The initiative aims to help organisations helping underserved communities adopt AI and cloud technologies, extending access to innovations that could improve healthcare outcomes worldwide. — BIZHUB