Brasil underscores Artificial Intelligence in Health as one of the priorities ahead of the BRICS Presidency

Expanding the use of AI in the area of health is one of the highlights of Brasil’s BRICS Presidency in 2025.

By Lucas Leffa | lucas.leffa@presidencia.gov.br

Can you imagine going to a medical appointment and, instead of the health professional taking note of all your symptoms, they are automatically transcribed and possible diagnoses are automatically suggestions to your doctor? What if, when you went for an electrocardiogram (EKG), your exam was compared to millions of other exams of the same kind, making it easier to identify physiological patterns that can indicate your disease?

This may sound like science fiction, but with the use of Artificial Intelligence in health, these and other many applications are already a reality. Expanding the use of AI in the field of health is one of the highlights of Brasil’s BRICS Presidency in 2025. The proposal is to discuss the development of technologies for this objective and to promote a robust data governance that may offer advantages in the group countries’ strategies to address the challenges related to access to health systems and identify complex disease patterns.

Ana Estela Haddad, Secretary of Information and Digital Health at the Brazilian Ministry of Health (Ministério da Saúde/MS), defends that the experience with the use of IA in the Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde/SUS), as well as the Brazilian government’s innovation in creating a specialized sector to deal with health digitalization and its results, are some of the contributions that can be presented to the BRICS countries. “The health digitalization initiatives have already been recognized as innovations at the level of the Americas by the (PAHO), and now we will be able to show them to the BRICS,” revealed the secretary.

However, collaboration among group members faces challenges such as the diversity of technological infrastructure, different regulatory structures, and the need to ensure privacy and security of health information. The BRICS countries are working to overcome these challenges through dialog and cooperation, developing joint solutions to ensure the quality inter-operationality of databases while also protecting the rights of their citizens.

“The BRICS brings us the opportunity to learn about the experiences of the other countries and for them to learn about ours. Development in a wide sense of health, information, and digital health,” the Secretary explains. During the Brazilian Presidency, the BRICS will discuss common standards for data collection, storage, and sharing, promoting ethical guidelines and legal frameworks to ensure transparency and inclusion in technological development.

AI for efficiency in health

Cooperation among BRICS countries can bolster joint research and the creation of innovation platforms to improve global sanitary response. The initiative also emphasizes AI use in precision medicine, exploring genetic and environmental data to personalize treatments and perfect disease prevention strategies. “Brasil is committed to strengthening digital health and AI in health, in collaboration with the private sector, focusing on inclusion, equity, and social justice,” stated Ana Estela Haddad.

One of the goals of the debates to be held during the Brazilian Presidency will be to create a platform for the joint development of research in digital health areas such as disease prediction, sanitary emergencies, public health vigilance, and optimization of health systems, as well as applications in the field and health management adaptation based on evidence, monitoring, and evaluation of public policies. The integration of AI in diagnostic processes, hospital management, and epidemiologic monitoring is expected to optimize resources, reduce inequalities, and enhance response capacity to sanitary emergencies.

The use of AI allows for optimized data analysis that will make it possible to allocate resources more efficiently, ensuring the sustainability of health systems. This approach has been proposed to address the inequality in the access to health services, a challenge faced by many countries.

In operation since 1990, Brasil’s Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde /SUS) provides around 2.8 billion public and universal healthcare services per year. In 2023, Brasil’s Ministry of Health (Ministério da Saúde/MS) created the Secretariat of Information and Digital Health (Secretaria de Informação e Saúde Digital /SEIDIGI), which coordinates digital transformation within the SUS with the goal of expanding access and promoting integral and continuous healthcare.