Trustworthy Health Information in the Age of Generative AI: GEO as a New Capacity for Digital Health Governance
World Digital Technology Academy
Session 269
Generative AI is changing how people seek, understand, and act on health information. Increasingly, individuals, professionals, institutions, and policymakers are no longer only searching and comparing multiple sources; they are asking AI systems and receiving synthesized answers directly.
This transformation creates a major public-interest challenge: how can we ensure that AI-mediated health information is trustworthy, evidence-informed, transparent, inclusive, and aligned with public health priorities?
This interactive session will discuss trustworthy health evidence as an emerging capacity for digital health governance in the AI era. It will explore how governments, international organizations, public health institutions, academia, industry, civil society, and technical communities can work together to strengthen the visibility, accessibility, and responsible use of validated health evidence in generative AI environments.
The session will also mark the release of the WDTA International Initiative on Trustworthy AI for Health and Public Health: Advancing Evidence-Informed, Inclusive, and Responsible Digital Health Governance. The initiative aims to promote international cooperation, shared principles, capacity building, and practical action to support trustworthy health information, evidence-informed decision-making, and equitable digital health transformation.
Session format
This 45-minute session will be interactive and discussion-oriented:
Opening presentation: introduction to the background, governance challenge, and project plan.
Panel reflections: two invited panellists will share perspectives on AI, health evidence, governance, and international cooperation.
Open discussion: participants will be invited to exchange views and contribute ideas for the international initiative.
Key questions
The session will explore:
How is generative AI transforming access to health information and health knowledge?
What risks arise when trustworthy evidence is not visible or well represented in AI-generated responses?
How can digital health governance protect the public from misinformation, low-quality content, and commercially driven distortion?
What capacities are needed to make health evidence more AI-ready, inclusive, and useful for decision-making?
How can international cooperation support multilingual, equitable, and evidence-informed digital health systems?
Who should attend
This session welcomes governments, UN agencies, international organizations, public health institutions, evidence synthesis groups, guideline developers, HTA bodies, researchers, AI developers, digital platforms, civil society organizations, youth leaders, patient groups, and all stakeholders interested in trustworthy AI, digital health, global health governance, and access to reliable health information.
Participants are warmly invited to join the discussion, contribute ideas, and collaborate in shaping a more trustworthy, inclusive, and evidence-informed digital health future.
Yuan Chi is the Digital Health Lead at World Digital Technology Academy (WDTA), CEO at Yealth Technology, and Professor and PhD supervisor at Jinan University. She is the first ethnic Chinese person elected to the Governing Board of The Cochrane Collaboration (Global NPO), aged 30 at the time of election. She was the project lead of World Health Organisation Essential Medicine List-Guideline Recommendation Alignment Project, commisioned by WHO Headquater. She is specialised in health evidence synthesis and clinical guideline methodology; public health and policy; global health; and decision science – including interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks, implementation, and network-building for the application of AI in evidence-based medicine and digital health. She authored more than 35 papers in peer reviewed international journals. She is committed to bridging resources and talents between LMICs and HICs to advance a more equitable global health ecosystem; empowering early-career scholars with high-quality, internationally oriented education, research, and career development; fostering collaboration across individuals and institutions, academia and industry, and multiple stakeholders; and promoting educational equity, lifelong learning, co-creation in research, and evidence-informed decision-making in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Professor Yale Li (Li Yuhang) is a renowned strategist in digital technology, celebrated for his visionary leadership and contributions to the field. He is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Digital Technology Academy (WDTA) and serves as the Chairman of the Cloud Security Alliance Greater China Region (CSA GCR). With over 30 years of experience in global digital technology, cybersecurity, and information security, Professor Li has held influential leadership roles across the industry.
Simão is a senior counsellor for the standardization work on AI for health in the ITU and the ITU/WHO/WIPO Global Initiative on AI for Health. Until 2024, he was the head of secretariat for ITU’s Study Group 16 (on multimedia and digital technology standards including audio and video coding, accessibility, digital health) and WHO/ITU Focus Group on AI for health (FG-AI4H). His standardization experience started in 1989 with voice compression standards, and has managed the development of some notable technical standards, including Primetime Emmy recipients H.264 AVC, H.265 HEVC and JPEG; as well as ITU/WHO H.870 Safe Listening Devices and H.810-series Continua Design Guidelines. Prior to joining ITU, Simão was a Scientist at COMSAT Labs, USA, and a researcher at Brazil's CPqD telecom research center.
A Senior Member of the IEEE, author of academic and position papers, he organized the first ITU Kaleidoscope Conference.
Yi (Elaine) Chen leads global public affairs and international partnerships at DAMO Academy, Alibaba Group’s research arm. Previously, she served as a member of multiple global initiatives such as the G20 Business Summit (B20) Task Force on Digital Transformation and the United Nations Secretary General’s Task Force on Digital Financing of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She was invited as a guest lecturer at Peking University and Tsinghua University in China.
Elaine Chen graduated from Columbia University with a master’s degree in international affairs, specializing in technology, media, and innovation.
Tim White is a Harvard graduate in Cybersecurity, entrepreneur, and youth volunteer leader with ASEZ. He is the Founder & CEO of NuVert, an emerging AI education and adoption company helping leaders understand and responsibly apply artificial intelligence. Tim previously worked as a systems, software, and security engineer at MITRE and holds BS/MS degrees in Computer Science from Tufts University. Through ASEZ, he supports youth-led service, sustainability, and global engagement initiatives connecting students with public leaders and international organizations.
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C3. Access to information and knowledge
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C4. Capacity building
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C7. ICT applications: benefits in all aspects of life — E-health
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C8. Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content
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C10. Ethical dimensions of the Information Society
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C11. International and regional cooperation
C3 (Access to information): It structures trusted evidence to be prioritized by AI, countering harmful misinformation and ensuring equitable access to accurate health knowledge.
·C4 (Capacity building): It builds multi-stakeholder capacity for AI-era knowledge translation, including training for public health institutions and digital health literacy for the public.
·C7 (E-health): It creates public health digital infrastructure for AI, including early warning systems for misinformation and standardized integration of evidence into AI-mediated health advice.
·C8 (Cultural and linguistic diversity): It elevates locally validated, context-appropriate health content from Global South countries, preserving local knowledge in AI responses.
·C10 (Ethical dimensions): It prioritizes public interest over commercial gain, ensuring evidence-based guidance outranks unvalidated content, and protects vulnerable populations from harmful misinformation.
·C11 (International cooperation): It is a multi-stakeholder global initiative partnering with LMICs, sharing open standards and coordinating cross-border action against AI health misinformation.
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Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all
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Goal 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
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Goal 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries
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Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
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Goal 17: Revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development
SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being): It stops GEO-optimized harmful health misinformation from crowding out evidence-based guidance in AI responses, ensuring the public consistently accesses accurate, life-saving health information when using generative AI, directly improving public health outcomes.
·SDG 9 (Innovation and Infrastructure): It builds pioneering AI-native digital health infrastructure — including open AI-accessible evidence formats, standardized trust certification and public APIs — filling the gap of health-specific GEO standards and driving responsible innovation in digital health governance.
·SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities): It centers equity by partnering with Global South low- and middle-income countries to build local GEO capacity, elevating their locally validated, context-appropriate health content in AI responses, countering the dominance of commercial content that widens global health gaps.
·SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption): It suppresses spread of low-quality, misleading commercial health content that drives harmful overconsumption of unproven products, empowering users to make informed, responsible health choices.
·SDG 17 (Global Partnerships): It is a multi-stakeholder global initiative that shares open standards and tools freely, bringing together governments, experts and global funders to tackle the cross-border challenge of AI health misinformation collectively.
- Objective 1: Close all digital divides and accelerate progress across the Sustainable Development Goals
- Objective 3: Foster an inclusive, open, safe and secure digital space that respects, protects and promotes human rights
- Objective 4: Advance responsible, equitable and interoperable data governance approaches
- Objective 5: Enhance international governance of artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity