KATHMANDU, OCTOBER 12 Nepali technology firm WiseYak Pvt Ltd has won the ASOCIO AI in Healthcare Award 2026 for its AI-Assisted Cytology Solution for Cervical Cancer Screening (AISCS). Presented at the ASOCIO Digital and AI Summit in Jakarta, Indonesia, the award recognises homegrown innovation addressing critical public health challenges across Asia-Oceania. Cervical cancer remains a leading health threat for women in Nepal, with roughly 2,200 new cases and 1,500 deaths annually. While early detection is vital, diagnostic reports are often delayed by a severe shortage of specialist pathologists. AISCS tackles this bottleneck by integrating directly into microscope-based laboratory workflows without requiring costly whole-slide scanners. Designed to assist clinicians rather than replace them, the system keeps all final diagnoses under expert supervision. Clinical validation using over 8,000 digitised image patches across 500 local patients demonstrated significant operational gains:

• Faster turnaround: Reduced reporting times from seven to 14 days to under two hours.
• Higher output: Increased screening throughput by up to four times.
• Workload relief: Cut pathologist review workload by up to 87 per cent.

Although performance may vary across clinical settings, WiseYak continues validation testing prior to commercial rollout. 'Technologies like AISCS show how countries in the Global South can build on the latest AI research to develop affordable solutions using local talent. This demonstrates what is possible when innovation is directed at local needs,' said Suresh Manandhar, co-founder and CEO of WiseYak. The achievement underscores the potential for developing nations to create tailored health-tech capabilities locally rather than relying solely on imported systems. WiseYak's next phase focuses on evaluating pathways for safe, sustainable deployment across Nepal and other resource-constrained regions facing similar healthcare barriers.