The Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) will launch SautiHealth, a technology-enabled platform for monitoring, analysing, and summarising public statements by health sector professionals, leaders, and institutions across Africa. The platform is an initiative of the CJID developed in partnership with the US-based research nonprofit Media Ecosystem Analysis Group (MEAG) to strengthen access to structured and verifiable public health information across the continent.
At a time when access to reliable, contextual, and timely information about public health policies and commitments is increasingly important, SautiHealth makes a significant contribution to strengthening transparency, media reporting, and research across Africa.
The platform automatically collects and organises public statements from verified sources, including media reports, press releases, institutional websites, interviews, and public broadcasts. By centralising this fragmented information, SautiHealth will help journalists, researchers, and civil society actors identify trends, compare statements over time, and better understand how health narratives evolve across countries and institutions.
As conversations around public health continue to influence policy decisions and public trust, the need for tools that help track commitments, rhetoric, and institutional communication has never been greater. SautiHealth provides structured, searchable access to verified statements and includes an AI-powered summarisation feature that generates source-linked summaries to help users quickly understand key messages while maintaining transparency through citations and metadata.
Speaking about the platform, CJID's Innovation Lead, Monsur Hussain, emphasised the importance of the tool and stressed that "instead of manually searching dozens of ministry sites, press releases, and social media posts, users can now explore a centralised, searchable database of verified public statements by health leaders to respond more effectively to health challenges."
The platform will also provide trend analysis features, enabling users to track shifts in narratives, identify emerging themes, and observe patterns in public communication over time.
"SautiHealth is a powerful platform to monitor digital discourse about health," said Emily Boardman Ndulue, Associate Director of MEAG. "Equally as important as rigorous data collection is the ability to access, query, and derive actionable findings from that data. CJID has built a platform that can do just that. We trust it will be a valuable tool for journalists, health communicators, and civic institutions working to advance population health."
CJID has developed the platform in collaboration with the Media Ecosystem Analysis Group (MEAG), whose research and analysis of media environments support the broader goal of improving access to reliable information and strengthening evidence-based policy conversations. Media Cloud, the open-source global news database managed by MEAG, is a primary data source into the SautiHealth platform. www.sautihealth.org
About CJID
The Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) is a West African media innovation and development think tank. Founded in 2014 as a non-governmental organisation in Nigeria, the Centre has led investigative journalism, innovation, open data, verification, and the promotion of accountability, transparency, and democratic governance across Africa.
About MEAG
Founded in 2017 as the Media Ecosystems Analysis Group (MEAG), MEAG manages the Media Cloud project and open-source tool suite. The Media Cloud project was initially developed at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and incubated at the MIT Media Lab. MEAG conducts, sponsors, and facilitates research and tool development for digital information ecosystems.