CERN’s Collaborative Workshop Paves the Way for Global Health Innovations

In October 2024, in collaboration with the Geneva Health Forum, CERN organised a co-creation Workshop on Global Health. The five interdisciplinary working groups gathered healthcare professionals, field experts from NGOs, technology experts, and researchers who explored innovative solutions to pressing global health challenges.

The workshop identified concrete solutions leveraging CERN’s expertise, including: a real-time decision-support tool for health workers administering vaccinations; an AI-powered global framework for malaria predictive modelling; R&D needs in real-time dosimetry, radiation visualisation, and radiation protection materials. The implementation of these solutions is being pursued in different ways, including through multi-partner funding applications.

The Global Health Workshop fully aligned with CERN’s strategy for medical applications, emphasising the use of the Laboratory’s technologies to meet medical community needs. It also showed that CERN can play a role in global health similar to the one it has in fields such as hadron therapy, by acting as an enabler for interactions between multiple stakeholders with the aim of maximising the impact of technology on society and of establishing long-lasting communities of practice. The collaborative efforts from this workshop have the potential to yield socio-economic benefits, including improved healthcare delivery, enhanced disease management, and strengthened health systems worldwide.