Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a new tool to help save lives, treat diseases, and conduct research. The first artificial intelligence research in the field of nephrology came from Egypt, ...Africa, and it was directed to predict and adjust the quality of hemodialysis sessions for patients even before they started the session, which saved time and money. Similarly, the application of AI in the field of transplantation comparing the accuracy of AI with multivariate statistics in the prediction of graft survival was done in Egypt. With advances in digital networking and the global spread of the internet, applications of AI have been expanded and now involve the field of research. AI can now start a research project, write a review article, and even plan a research design. In this paper, we discuss how AI can be used in various fields of nephrology, emphasizing the benefits over the drawbacks.
The burden of chronic kidney disease and associated risk of kidney failure are increasing in Africa. The management of people with chronic kidney disease is fraught with numerous challenges because ...of limitations in health systems and infrastructures for care delivery. From the third iteration of the International Society of Nephrology Global Kidney Health Atlas, we describe the status of kidney care in the ISN Africa region using the World Health Organization building blocks for health systems. We identified limited government health spending, which in turn led to increased out-of-pocket costs for people with kidney disease at the point of service delivery. The health care workforce across Africa was suboptimal and further challenged by the exodus of trained health care workers out of the continent. Medical products, technologies, and services for the management of people with nondialysis chronic kidney disease and for kidney replacement therapy were scarce due to limitations in health infrastructure, which was inequitably distributed. There were few kidney registries and advocacy groups championing kidney disease management in Africa compared with the rest of the world. Strategies for ensuring improved kidney care in Africa include focusing on chronic kidney disease prevention and early detection, improving the effectiveness of the available health care workforce (e.g., multidisciplinary teams, task substitution, and telemedicine), augmenting kidney care financing, providing quality, up-to-date health information data, and improving the accessibility, affordability, and delivery of quality treatment (kidney replacement therapy or conservative kidney management) for all people living with kidney failure.
