OpenAI Foundation pledges $100m to boost hepatitis C cure rates

The OpenAI Foundation has committed $100m to help fund a new public health initiative, using artificial intelligence (AI) to help states and local jurisdictions in the US close the “discovery-to-delivery” gap.

Launched in partnership with the Common Health Coalition, the Breakthroughs to Follow-Through (B2F) programme will initially focus on hepatitis C, with plans to explore other areas for application, such as in HIV prevention and “curable cancers”, if the initiative proves successful.

Oral medicines can cure more than 95% of patients with hepatitis C in as little as eight to 12 weeks, but, despite the availability of an effective treatment, approximately two-thirds of patients living with the condition in the US remain untreated. Moreover, 40 Americans die unnecessarily as a result of the disease each day, according to the coalition.

“A cure doesn’t help anyone if it never reaches them," said Dr Atul Gawande, professor at Ariadne Labs, a joint centre at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Our golden era of breakthrough innovation has not been matched by a similar commitment to follow-through innovation. This partnership aims to change that. We have the solutions. But we’ve been missing the infrastructure: to make it easier to find the people falling through the cracks, get their caregivers talking to each other, and enable clinicians to do what they already know how to do.”

Initial funds will support the deployment of AI-enabled tools to help “at least double” hepatitis C cure rates across eight participating jurisdictions over the next two years, beginning with collaborators and non-profit organisations in Alabama, Illinois, Louisiana, and Massachusetts. Additional participating jurisdictions are expected to be announced within the next six months.

According to an announcement from OpenAI, B2F will provide local teams with the technical assistance, implementation experience, and cross-jurisdictional learning needed to better serve their communities. Primarily, this includes identifying patients who have fallen through the cracks and putting them back on the path to treatment, as well as tracking progress across the “care cascade”.

Under B2F, EqualCure, a national hepatitis C treatment organisation, will lead the initiative’s hepatitis C centre of excellence, while the Institute for Public Health Innovation, PopHIVE, and Your Local Epidemiologist will provide additional technical assistance and support.

“Hepatitis C is curable,” said Dr Sameer Vohra, Director, Illinois Department of Public Health. “Unfortunately, too many Illinoisans face barriers to timely and effective treatment. This investment gives Illinois a powerful opportunity to modernise how we deliver hepatitis C care. By pairing AI‑enabled tools with strong partnerships across public health, clinical care, and community organisations, we can better identify residents who have fallen through the cracks and reconnect them to lifesaving treatment.”

The programme will operate alongside broader efforts to tackle hepatitis C nationally, with Congress separately considering legislation aimed at addressing the disease across the US.