The clearest proof that artificial intelligence improves lives will come from conditions medicine already knows how to cure.
A child is born with clubfoot roughly every three minutes. The condition twists one or both feet inward and downward, and left untreated it becomes a permanent disability that can make the simple act of walking painful or even impossible. The repercussions extend well beyond limiting mobility and can keep children out of school and, later, adults out of work. The AI industry is searching for proof that technology improves human lives, and I believe much of that proof will come from conditions like this one, where medicine solved the problem long ago yet delivery remains unfinished. At MiracleFeet, the nonprofit I lead, we are leveraging AI to narrow that delivery gap responsibly, while being equally intentional about where it should not be used.
Clubfoot Is Treatable. Access Is the Challenge.
About 200,000 babies are born with clubfoot every year, and most of them live in low- and middle-income countries where treatment is hard to reach. The cure does not require major surgery. A trained provider corrects the foot through a sequence of plaster casts over a few months, and a nightly brace, worn until age four or five, holds the correction in place. This protocol, known as the Ponseti method, fully corrects 95% of cases at an average cost of about $500 per child. The medicine is settled, and the remaining work is operational. Health systems face a dual challenge: reaching newborns with clubfoot early and keeping families engaged throughout the treatment journey since children who do not complete care face significant risk of relapse.
The greatest barrier to eliminating clubfoot is no longer the treatment itself but the challenge of delivering it consistently and at scale. Data helps close that gap, making this part of our story particularly relevant to those who build technology. MiracleFeet supports treatment in more than 500 clinics across nearly 40 countries. Frontline providers record every stage of a child’s treatment in a mobile app designed to work offline, because many clinics have unreliable connectivity. The information flows automatically into a central system where our team tracks quality and outcomes in real time. That pipeline now carries more than a quarter of a million patient visits a year, managed by an organization of roughly 50 people without a single dedicated software engineer on staff. The automation saves about $215,000 and 22,000 staff hours annually, and that money and time go back into care. Most importantly, the system flags children who have stopped coming to appointments so local teams can re-engage them in treatment.
Using AI to Close the Care Gap
Artificial intelligence extends this work rather than replacing it. Its greatest value lies in helping ensure access to quality care, support families throughout the process, and identify trends and anomalies. The patterns buried in the records of hundreds of clinics already exceed what any human team can track, and our early applications stay close to that strength. We are exploring AI chat tools on WhatsApp that answer parents’ questions and encourage adherence through years of bracing, the kind of support overstretched clinics cannot always provide. We are testing AI to improve data integrity, flagging duplicate records and statistical anomalies so we have an accurate understanding of care quality and gaps. We see promise in using AI to surface insights from the narrative reports our partners regularly submit, weighing what they describe against trends in missed visits and enrollment so we understand why a clinic is struggling and can respond sooner. And because photographs travel more easily than expert trainers, AI-assisted review of casting quality could extend training and supervision to far more clinicians.
Care AI Cannot Replicate
We are equally deliberate about where AI has no place. Clubfoot treatment succeeds because skilled providers do careful physical work with their hands and because families trust those caring for their children. I am skeptical of proposals to automate that skill, including AI-designed, 3D-printed casts, which would deskill the very workforce health systems have spent years building. We also hold a hard line on privacy. The children we serve are among the most vulnerable patients in the world, and their personal information has no place in AI training data. Any tool we adopt has to clear that bar before we talk about what it can do.
Skepticism about AI in global health is warranted. Too many technology pilots impress funders in the short term only to disappear when grant funding ends, and tools that perform well in one setting often struggle in another. There is also a legitimate question of priorities: every dollar spent on technology is a dollar that could otherwise support casts, braces, training, or clinical care. We take those concerns seriously because they have shaped what we have chosen not to pursue. Rather than building new systems around AI, we are applying it to infrastructure that already supports hundreds of clinics and has proven its value over time. And because the automation we use already generates efficiencies that exceed its costs, technology strengthens our ability to deliver care rather than competing with it.
Our goal, which we call Run Free 2030, is to dramatically increase access to clubfoot care by the end of this decade. We will get there by finding children earlier and keeping families engaged through treatment, with quality holding steady as we grow, and AI used with restraint can help with each of those tasks today. My invitation to the people building this technology is straightforward: to see evidence that AI can change lives, look beyond the applications that dominate the headlines and toward the millions of people who still struggle to access care we already know how to deliver. A baby born with clubfoot this morning can grow up to walk and run like any other child. The question is not whether the treatment exists, but whether we can ensure every child receives it. AI’s value is not in replacing doctors or inventing miracles, but in helping proven care reach the children who are currently being left behind.
Daphne de Souza Lima Sorensen is the Chief Executive Officer of MiracleFeet, a global nonprofit expanding access to clubfoot treatment across nearly 40 countries.
