WhatsApp becomes the doctor’s office in Turn.io’s voice AI play

Cape Town-based messaging platform Turn.io is betting that voice AI can do for the world’s 739 million non-literate adults what text-based digital services have failed to: deliver healthcare to a phone they already own.

The company has opened applications for its 2026 Chat for Health accelerator, a 24-week programme that will see 10 healthcare organisations across the Global South build AI-enabled chat and voice services on WhatsApp — with Anthropic stepping in as AI partner and ElevenLabs as voice AI partner.

The programme, announced this week at the Skoll World Forum in Oxford, will support 10 healthcare organisations in emerging markets to build AI-enabled chat and voice services on WhatsApp. Total programme value across the cohort is up to US$750 000, with primary funding coming from Endless Network.

Selected organisations will receive access to Turn.io’s platform — including AI triage, appointment management and electronic medical record integrations — alongside Anthropic API credits and ElevenLabs voice AI tooling for multilingual text-to-speech and speech-to-text.

This year’s programme will lean particularly heavily on voice AI, with Turn.io citing the roughly 739 million adults worldwide who cannot read or write as a key barrier to text-based digital health services.

“In our 2026 programme, we are particularly focused on what becomes possible when voice removes the literacy barrier entirely,” Turn.io co-founder Gustav Praekelt said.

Origins

Turn.io has its origins in the Praekelt Foundation, the non-profit Praekelt founded in 2007. Its platform powers MomConnect, the South African health department’s maternal-health messaging service, and was the basis for the country’s Covid-19 HealthAlert WhatsApp service, which reached more than seven million users at the height of the pandemic. The same underlying technology was adopted by the World Health Organisation for its global Covid-19 messaging.

Anthropic global health lead Annie Maxwell said the partnership puts AI tools “in the hands of social entrepreneurs who already understand what their patients need”.

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Turn.io says its 2025 health accelerator cohort produced measurable results. According to the company, Nigerian primary care provider MDaaS Global increased patient follow-up rates sixfold using its WhatsApp-based assistant, Pakistan-based doctHERs reduced administrative workload by 35% while onboarding 10 000 users in a month, and Helium Health saw 94% of users engage with its AI symptom checker. Kenyan hybrid-care provider Cliniva shifted more than 80% of consultations to WhatsApp.

The 2025 cohort included Cape Town health-tech start-up AI Diagnostics, which is piloting a digital stethoscope for tuberculosis and respiratory screening. The 2026 programme is open to organisations across Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Applications close on 31 May, with the final cohort to be announced at the end of June. The programme runs from July to December, ending with an online demo day. — (c) 2026 NewsCentral Media