Darlington Akogo Builds AI Healthcare System Transforming Ghana and Global Medicine Access

By Thuku Kariuki and Daniel Furnad - When he was a boy, Darlington Akogo had a doctor’s appointment. He waited six hours to see a specialist.

Years later, Darlington became interested in fixing Ghana’s health care system. At first, he wanted to make scheduling smoother. But eventually, he discovered machine learning.

Now, Darlington has created some of the most sophisticated artificial intelligence systems for health care in the world.

“We are doing things that even trillion-dollar companies are not able to do. We have AI systems that are designing new drugs end-to-end without any human involvement. We have AI systems diagnosing diseases and helping detect cancers,” says Darlington.

It may sound like a bold claim, but it’s backed by facts. Darlington attends AI conferences across the world, both the biggest and the smallest.

The people who matter in this industry know who this African is and how smart and ambitious he is. Bill Gates once flew him to Massachusetts for dinner. (And Microsoft has come through with some funding.)

Walking into the headquarters of his company, Mino Health AI, in Ghana’s capital, Accra, one is struck by the age of his staff, no one looks a day over 30. Not even Darlington, who is 29. But curiosity, a strong educational background, and good old-fashioned hard work have built a team with capabilities far beyond their years.

“The thing about hiring highly ambitious people who are driven by problem-solving and aspiration is that we never hesitate,” Darlington says proudly. 

“This is a start-up, and mad effort and hours are required to make it work. We’re essentially competing with people who have way more resources than we do. We’re not competing with people in Accra or Ghana, we’re competing internationally. And it means that with what we just released one of our new agents, the MOREMI bioagent, we are up against initiatives from Google.”

His health AI systems are used in over 50 countries. He just returned from Barbados, where he signed a deal with the government to train and equip state hospitals. His systems are also active in the U.S., Europe, India, Pakistan, and much of the developed world.

But Darlington knows where he comes from and what his part of the world needs: faster, more accurate, and more affordable health care.

“In Ghana, the doctor-to-patient ratio used to be 1 to 10,000. Today, it has improved slightly, 1 to 7,000 or 8,000. But in countries like Malawi, it’s 1 to 60,000. The solution can’t be to wait until Africa develops like Europe. Human life can’t be worth less here.”

Darlington and other tech delegates at a health Conference in 2024, photo Thuku

His systems, which are constantly evolving, have the potential to revolutionize medicine. But not everyone understands how. Many people still think AI is just about chatting with bots or asking search engine-style questions. But it’s much more.

In health care, the MOREMI bioagent is fed data from hospitals in Ghana, or potentially from anywhere in the world. His partnership in Nigeria, for example, gives the system access to that country’s health database.

This means the AI can analyze more than just the 2,500 patients a doctor might see in a month, it draws insights from millions of cases.

It reviews x-rays, blood tests, and other measurements. It considers a patient’s family medical history, regional disease trends, previous treatments and outcomes, and even genomics to assess predispositions.

With all of this information, it delivers a diagnosis, treatment plan, and even drafts a medical report in a fraction of the time it would take a human doctor.

“If MOREMI drafts a medical report for you, it does that in five seconds. In some cases, two seconds, for something as complex as breast cancer,” Darlington asserts.

His system also supports researchers and medical scientists. “We’ve built an AI system that is designing drugs, antibodies, small molecules, for HIV, malaria, cancer, and more. Biologists usually take up to a month to do this. Our system does it in three minutes, entirely AI-driven, with no human in the loop.”

Don’t get this wrong, Darlington is not trying to cut humans out of health care. His systems are built to assist professionals, not replace them. They are about making medicine more available, more efficient, and more affordable, especially in Africa.

His family moved to Italy when he was young and encouraged him to bring his ideas to life in Europe or America. But he returned to Ghana for a reason.

Darlington declared, “I would have felt really horrible if I was sitting in the U.S., with AI systems in a bunch of hospitals, knowing damn well that in the country I came from, the continent I came from, where there is much more need for better systems, I had abandoned it. So, this is ground zero if you want to solve health care. It’s right here in Africa. It’s right here in Ghana.”

According to Prof. Tom Kariuki from the Science for Africa Foundation, “AI has the potential to revolutionize global and digital health in Africa. By investing in AI-led innovations, the SFA Foundation is empowering Africa’s researchers and innovators to lead the way in addressing the healthcare challenges that have long affected our communities. This initiative marks a pivotal moment in African-led digital innovations, allowing us to harness AI's transformative power for the benefit of all Africans and beyond.”

Despite rapid advancements, unresolved challenges continue to hinder AI’s potential across various industries, especially in Africa.

As Darlington pushes his innovation forward, financing, regulation, infrastructure, and data accessibility remain key issues that must be addressed for Africa to fully benefit from AI in health care.

For Darlington, the future of medicine isn’t in a boardroom in Silicon Valley, it’s in a lab in Accra, built by a team of young Africans solving real problems for their people. And that, he believes, is exactly where it should be.