Can AI help solve Pakistan’s rising health burden?

KARACHI: According to a new opinion poll by Gallup Pakistan, chronic illnesses affect 50 per cent of Pakistani households. Released on June 2, the poll is based on a nationally representative sample of adult men and women from across the country who were asked “Unfortunately, does anyone in your household suffer from any of the following illnesses and regularly take medication for it?”.

In response to this question, 21 per cent said ‘blood pressure’, 20 per cent said ‘diabetes’, 10 per cent said ‘both (diabetes and blood Pressure)’ and 47 per cent said ‘none of these’, while 2.0 per cent said they did not know or did not respond. The survey’s error margin is plus/minus 2-3 per cent at the 95 per cent confidence level, implying a high degree of confidence in its results.

Pakistan’s growing chronic disease burden has also been highlighted by health experts, with the latest International Diabetes Federation (IDF) Diabetes Atlas 2025 showing that the country has the highest age-standardised diabetes prevalence rate globally, standing at 31.4 per cent.

Health professionals have emphasised that early detection and timely diagnoses are crucial to bringing down the economic burden of chronic illnesses like diabetes and hypertension as millions of patients are unaware that they even suffer from a chronic health problem, which increases the risks of severe complications like organ failure.

While new technologies like AI are revolutionising the global health landscape, including in tasks like early detection and treatment, the adoption of such technologies in Pakistan remains low. According to Chairman of the Wireless and Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan (WISPAP) Shahzad Arshad, “adopting such AI-driven medical technologies promises a monumental leap in addressing its high chronic illness burden. By implementing AI-powered diagnostics, remote consultations and predictive analytics, Pakistan can … provide tailored, proactive care, ultimately improving health outcomes and making quality healthcare more accessible and affordable for its population”. However, the use of such technologies is still quite limited.

CEO of research firm Hina Shahrukh Group LTD Sharukh Malik says that the level of AI health technology in Pakistan is still mostly limited to more basic applications like chatbots that connect patients with a consultant after learning their symptoms. The use of AI in more advanced tasks like actual diagnosis is far less prevalent. Malik says that some of the major obstacles to wider adoption of AI health tools include patients’ reluctance to rely on data sharing due to privacy concerns, high initial costs, and doubts about accuracy.

Some of these concerns are echoed by Head of the Department of Radiology at Dr Ziauddin Hospital Professor Dr Muhammad Ali. Dr Ali says that, while the use of AI in healthcare has been taking place in Pakistan for quite some time and is expanding, there are challenges when it comes to sharing patient data with software houses to develop AI algorithms. He also says that the lack of research-based posts or jobs in university hospitals makes it difficult for Pakistan to develop its own AI software.

To rectify this, private and public initiatives could perhaps heed Shahzad Arshad’s argument for a bigger shift towards AI health technologies, which he says would “require significant investment in infrastructure, training, and robust data governance”.