Bridging the Gap in Pediatric Heart Care: One Heart Health’s Mission Explained
Every year, 1 in 100 babies worldwide is born with congenital heart disease (CHD), making it the most common birth defect. That’s approximately 1.3 million children annually, many of whom could live healthy lives if CHD was detected early.
Yet, 90% of these children are in low-resource settings, where access to pediatric specialists and diagnostic tools is limited. This means thousands of children remain untreated, facing life-threatening complications.
At One Heart Health, we believe every child deserves a chance at a healthy life. That’s why we’ve expanded into Mongolia and Bolivia. But these are just the beginning—many more countries could benefit from the One Heart App, an affordable and accessible screening tool designed for non-specialized healthcare providers in underserved regions.
Why One Heart Health Partnered with Pediatric Specialists in Mongolia and Bolivia
Mongolia spans over 600,000 square miles but has only one pediatric cardiologist for a population of 3.4 million. This presents major challenges:
- Limited access to specialists – CHD care falls on general practitioners and nurses who lack specialized training.
- Delayed detection – Without proper screening, CHD often goes undetected until it’s too late.
- Geographic barriers – Mongolia’s vast landscape makes travel to specialists expensive and time-consuming for families.
Bolivia’s diverse geography—high-altitude mountains, jungles, and remote villages—creates major obstacles to CHD care.
- Altitude-related complications – Children in lowland regions struggle to access specialists in high-altitude cities due to heart strain risks.
- Limited infrastructure – Many hospitals lack essential tools for CHD screening, leading to delayed or missed detection.
One Heart Health’s Solution: AI-Powered CHD Screening in Mongolia & Bolivia
How It Works
- Non-specialized healthcare workers use the One Heart App to record heart sounds.
- The app’s machine-learning algorithms can analyze these sounds and provide a probability score for potential abnormalities detected.
- The data can then be sent directly to a pediatric cardiologist, who reviews it remotely and provides a consultation and next steps.
By testing and implementing this technology, One Heart Health is:
- Overcoming geographic barriers – Families no longer have to travel long distances to know what the critical next steps are.
- Lowering healthcare costs – AI screening through the One Heart App is free because of the generosity of our donors.
- Maximizing specialist time – Doctors can remotely review cases, focusing on urgent needs.
This approach ensures more children are screened for CHD and can be treated before complications arise.
Mongolia & Bolivia Are Just the Beginning: More Countries Need This Life-Saving Tool
While our expansion into Mongolia and Bolivia is making a significant impact, millions of children in other countries still lack access to early CHD screening.
Sub-Saharan Africa: A Critical Need for Pediatric Heart Care
In many African countries, CHD often goes undetected due to a severe shortage of specialists and screening tools.
One Heart Health has already started a partnership in Nigeria, where there are fewer than 50 pediatric cardiologists for a population of over 200 million.
Uganda, Ethiopia, and Sudan face similar shortages, with thousands of cases of CHD undetected in children suffering from preventable complications.
Expanding One Heart Health’s technology to these regions could give frontline nurses and doctors the ability to screen for CHD right in their communities while streamlining the pediatric cardiologists work to be able to assist more children in need.
Southeast Asia: Millions of Children at Risk
Countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the Philippines have large populations but extremely limited access to pediatric heart care.
With the One Heart App, healthcare workers in remote villages and community clinics could conduct screenings without requiring expensive hospital visits.
Latin America: Expanding Beyond Bolivia
Other Latin American countries, such as Peru, Guatemala, and Honduras, face geographic and economic barriers that prevent early CHD detection.
Expanding One Heart Health’s reach in Latin America would allow thousands of children to be screened for CHD sooner, improving survival rates and long-term health outcomes.
Expanding Our Reach: How You Can Help
Our goal is to expand to five additional countries in 2025, but to achieve this, we need your support.
Ways to Get Involved
- Donate – Your contributions help us provide more digital stethoscopes and expand our AI-powered screening technology.
- Share Our Mission – Spread the word about One Heart Health’s impact by sharing our stories. Even share this blog post with a coworker or friend!
- Partner With Us – We are seeking partnerships with healthcare organizations, NGOs, and medical professionals to expand our reach.
A Future Where Every Child Gets a Chance at a Healthy Life
One Heart Health was founded on a simple belief: every child deserves access to life-saving medical care, no matter where they live.
With our expansion into Mongolia and Bolivia, we’ve proven that AI-driven technology can overcome barriers that once made CHD detection impossible in low-resource settings. But this is just the beginning.
With your help, we can bring this life-saving technology to more countries, more communities, and more children in need.
Join us in making a difference. Donate today, spread the word, and be part of the future of pediatric heart care.
