Second Look

IRC delivers around 9 million outpatient consultations each year, often in settings where clinicians have only minutes with each patient. In that environment, clinicians have to make consequential decisions quickly and with limited information. Traditional decision-support tools can create a new problem: more questions, more screens and more information competing for already scarce attention.

We designed our clinical companion around humanitarian realities. We’re prototyping an AI-powered tool that rapidly reviews cases against gold-standard clinical guidance and surfaces missed danger signs or consequential alternative diagnoses that could change care. Rather than directing the consultation or demanding more clinician time, it provides a rapid ‘second look’ while keeping the clinician firmly in charge.

We’re running simulations with doctors in Colombia to get early signals before building a more robust tool for scale. Because Second Look is software, the same safety layer could ultimately support millions of consultations at very low marginal cost per additional visit. The impact we’re testing for is concrete: fewer unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions, more dangerous conditions caught, and more reliable care across IRC’s health programming.