This Research Topic is linked to the Digital Health Africa 2025 Conference (September 3–4, 2025), building on the successful DHA-2024 initiative. Africa faces significant health challenges, including maternal and child mortality rates that are substantially higher than global averages. However, digital health innovations, particularly AI, telemedicine, and precision medicine, offer unprecedented opportunities to address these challenges.

The continent is undergoing rapid digital transformation in healthcare, with countries like Kenya, Rwanda, Nigeria, and South Africa implementing innovative AI-powered diagnostic tools, telemedicine platforms, and mobile health solutions. Despite this progress, significant barriers persist, including infrastructure gaps where many health facilities lack stable electricity or internet access.

This Research Topic explores how digital technologies can transform healthcare delivery for Africa’s most vulnerable populations, with emphasis on maternal and child health, rare pediatric diseases, infectious disease management, and antimicrobial stewardship.

We seek to advance evidence-based digital health interventions in Africa by:

1. Documenting successful implementations
2. Establishing best practices for AI and telemedicine in resource-limited settings
3. Informing policy development
4. Building the evidence base for precision medicine applications in African populations

We invite contributions that examine digital health, telemedicine, and AI applications in African healthcare—especially on the following themes (but not limited to):

• Maternal and Child Health: Digital technologies, including remote monitoring systems, telemedicine platforms, mobile applications, and community health worker tools for improving obstetric, pediatric, and maternal care delivery.
• Rare Pediatric Diseases: Digital solutions encompassing patient registries, computer-assisted diagnostics, telemedicine specialist networks, and genetic counseling platforms for rare disease surveillance and management.
• Infectious Diseases & Antimicrobial Stewardship: Digital surveillance systems, automated resistance monitoring, vaccination platforms, electronic stewardship programs, and outbreak response technologies.
• Precision Medicine & Pharmacometrics: Personalized treatment, pharmacometric modeling, digital pharmacovigilance, and precision dosing adapted for African populations and resource-limited settings.

Submission Types: Original research articles, policy and regulatory analyses, case studies from African contexts, perspective and opinion papers.

Are you interested in contributing a manuscript to this Research Topic?

Digital Health in Africa: Advancing Equitable Care for Maternal and Child Health, Rare Diseases, and Infectious Disease Management

Topic Coordinator