Student AI Innovation Strengthens UNIMA–GHII Digital Health Collaboration
The University of Malawi, through the Department of Physics and Electronics, has taken another step in advancing student-led digital health innovation following a technical engagement with the Global Health Informatics Institute (GHII) on an AI-enabled cardiovascular screening project.
The engagement was held within the broader UNIMA–GHII collaboration framework, which seeks to strengthen student innovation, industrial attachment, prototyping support, and the co-development of health-related technologies. Through this partnership, UNIMA and GHII are working to connect academic training with real-world health technology development, with particular attention to solutions that are scientifically sound, affordable, and relevant to Malawi’s healthcare needs.
The project presented during the visit, titled “AI-Powered Stethoscope for Cardiovascular Screening in Malawi”, was developed by final-year Bachelor of Science in Electronics students Steven Chidzanja, Rajab Kingstone Indah, and John Nahshon Moyo, under the supervision of Dr Dackson Masiyano.
Presenting on behalf of the student team, Chidzanja outlined progress made in developing an embedded artificial intelligence pipeline for heart-sound classification.
The work uses digital signal processing, MFCC feature extraction, convolutional neural networks, Edge Impulse, TensorFlow Lite, and TinyML deployment testing using an Arduino Nicla Vision platform.
Speaking after the engagement, Dr Masiyano said the work demonstrates the value of linking student projects to real national challenges.
“This project is important because it shows that our students can engage with emerging technologies such as embedded AI, TinyML, and biomedical signal processing in ways that are relevant to Malawi’s healthcare challenges. The value of the work is not that it is already a clinical tool, but that it provides a strong technical starting point for future hardware development, ethical data collection, clinical validation, and postgraduate research,” said Dr Masiyano.
The visit also created space to discuss how the prototype can be strengthened through the UNIMA–GHII partnership. Areas identified for further development include improved heart-sound acquisition hardware, clinical data governance, validation protocols, dashboard integration, student mentorship, and possible publication and grant pathways.
In follow-up remarks, the Director of GHII, Dr Timothy Mtonga, commended the progress made on the project and encouraged the team to consider available funding and publication opportunities.
“Innovations of this nature are encouraging because they show how local technical capacity can contribute to digital health solutions. The next step is to ensure that such tools are developed within strong clinical, ethical, and data governance frameworks. GHII is interested in supporting pathways that move promising prototypes toward responsible evaluation and potential health-system relevance,” said Dr Mtonga.
The engagement also opened discussion on a broader postgraduate research pathway that could extend the student work into a multimodal cardiovascular screening platform, which may combine heart sounds, photoplethysmography, and single-lead ECG to support more comprehensive AI-assisted cardiovascular screening, subject to ethical approval and clinical validation.
The visit highlights UNIMA’s growing role in locally-relevant health technology innovation and demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary collaboration between electronics, artificial intelligence, biomedical instrumentation, health informatics, and clinical partners.
