Tuberculosis killed an estimated 1.23 million people in 2024, and in the countries where it hits hardest a chest X-ray remains the first clinical step toward a diagnosis. The bottleneck is who reads the image.
DeepTek has opened what it calls Global Access Pricing for its WHO-recommended chest X-ray AI. Under an access agreement with Unitaid and the Clinton Health Access Initiative, public-sector and not-for-profit providers in 138 low- and middle-income countries can license the software at roughly a third of its former price. DeepTek reckons the discount lets national TB programs reach about three times as many people without finding new money.
One yearly fee covers installation and user training, then product updates, maintenance and technical support, with no cap on how many AI analyses each connected X-ray unit can run.
The software runs online, offline or in a hybrid setup, which suits mobile screening units and clinics with weak connectivity. Beyond TB it flags more than 20 chest abnormalities, among them cardiomegaly, silicosis and lung cancer, each with published pricing of its own.
Unitaid’s Philippe Duneton framed the price cut as a way to widen timely TB detection while funding stays tight. Marie Chantale Lepine, who leads global markets at CHAI, said cheaper annual licenses would let high-burden countries put AI screening into more mobile clinics and community health centers. Adoption remains the open question, because a discount only helps where clinics already have the machines and the staff to run them.
