I’m a clinician-engineer and Rhodes Scholar, currently pursuing a DPhil in Clinical AI at the University of Oxford. My career is driven by a single mission: to bridge the vast gap between the cutting-edge potential of artificial intelligence and the on-the-ground realities of healthcare delivery, particularly in resource-constrained settings. My medical training at the University of the Witwatersrand and subsequent service in South Africa’s public sector, including at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, exposed me to the profound systemic dysfunctions that undermine patient care. I saw brilliant clinicians overwhelmed by logistical failures and realised my greatest impact would not be in treating one patient at a time, but in redesigning the systems of care themselves.

To achieve this, I co-founded two health-tech ventures. Engage Mx is a large-scale patient analytics platform designed to make population health management seamless for doctors. By integrating diverse data sources, we automatically identify patients with chronic diseases and streamline their ongoing care. Our software now actively monitors over 1.5 million patients and has successfully returned more than 20,000 individuals who had fallen out of the system back into medical care. My second venture, Phylaxis.ai, focuses on preventative health. We develop AI-driven tools, including an LLM-based HIV counselling and engagement tool, to identify and support individuals at high risk of disease before they require acute care.

I believe I was nominated because my work represents a unique synthesis of deep clinical experience, entrepreneurial execution, and academic leadership. This is validated by my role on the founding editorial board of the BMJ Digital Health & AI , my position as a team lead and domain expert on the Lancet Commission for AI in HIV , and recognition such as being named to the Forbes Africa 30 Under 30 list and the Mail & Guardian Top 200 Young South Africans.

I would be a worthy winner because I don’t just research or theorise about the future of healthcare; I am actively building it from the ground up, in the environments that need it most. My work creates a cycle: my clinical practice informs the problems my companies solve, and my academic research at Oxford ensures our solutions are at the global forefront.

My vision: For myself, my goal is to continue operating at the nexus of clinical insight, technological innovation, and academic rigour. I will leverage my research at Oxford to develop the next generation of clinical AI tools and, crucially, ensure they are immediately translated into practical applications that solve tangible problems for patients and providers in South Africa and beyond.

For my businesses, the vision is continental. For Engage Mx and Phylaxis.ai, the goal is to scale our platforms to make data-driven, proactive, and preventative healthcare the standard of care across Africa. We aim to empower health systems to do more with less, turning reactive, overburdened facilities into agile, efficient networks of care.

For South Africa, my vision is one of technological sovereignty in healthcare. We have the talent, the insight, and the drive to solve our own problems. Instead of merely importing models from the global north, we should be leading the world in developing solutions for complex health environments. My vision is for a South Africa that leverages home-grown innovation to build an equitable, resilient, and world-class health system that serves as a blueprint for other nations facing similar challenges.