Asger Risom
Bill Gates says AI could make high-quality medical advice “always-available,” but only if reliability, oversight, and access gaps are tackled first.
Bill Gates is betting that AI will reshape health care not just in labs, but in everyday clinics, including in countries with too few doctors and nurses.
In his gatesnotes letter, he says AI can speed up new treatments and also help deliver care directly, if systems are built to let clinicians override and verify outputs.
From discovery to delivery
Gates points to a fast-moving pipeline, including advances in diagnosis and prevention, and argues AI can help close gaps in cost, quality, and access.
He also says he already uses AI tools to understand his own health, and imagines similar support becoming routine for patients and providers.
Remote clinics first
A key promise, Gates writes, is reaching places with workforce shortages: AI tools that help health workers in remote clinics cover more people, with language support that includes less-common African languages.
That emphasis aligns with WHO guidance stressing that AI in health needs strong governance, safety checks, privacy protections, and accountability, especially in lower-resource settings.
What has to go right
Gates is explicit that the tech is not “there yet.” Reliability and clinical integration are the bottlenecks, and he says governments will need to lead implementation so markets do not leave poorer systems behind.
WHO has issued ethics and governance guidance for AI in health, and more recent WHO guidance addresses risks and governance needs for generative AI in health contexts, reinforcing the same theme: AI can help, but it must be controlled, evaluated, and supervised.
Sources: gatesnotes, WHO
