Sword Health signs AI deal with Brazil’s public health system

Portuguese health tech unicorn Sword Health has signed a technology cooperation agreement with Brazil’s Health Ministry to deploy artificial intelligence in the country’s public health system, a move that could significantly expand the company’s international footprint in one of the world’s largest state-run healthcare networks.

Under the agreement, Sword Health will design, test and implement AI tools across federal, state and municipal levels of Brazil’s Sistema Único de Saúde, or SUS. The work is expected to cover voice and text-based clinical triage, smarter waiting-list prioritisation and scheduling, clinical decision support, and prevention and health promotion.

The partnership was announced by Brazil’s Health Minister Alexandre Padilha at the 21st Brazilian Congress of Health Informatics. Sword founder and chief executive Virgílio Bento said Brazil faces the same challenge as other public health systems, with demand rising faster than response capacity, and said the company’s technology is aimed at expanding access to care at scale.

Technical work is due to begin in early 2027, when the first transformation projects and implementation plan will be defined. Sword said that, given the scale of the SUS and the ambition of Brazil’s Health Ministry, this could become its broadest collaboration with a national health service to date, larger than its work in Portugal, the UK, Germany and Greece.

Originally published at Eco.pt