  Artificial Intelligence applications have shown promise in the management of
pandemics and have been widely used to assist the identification,
classification, and diagnosis of medical images. In response to the global
outbreak of Monkeypox (Mpox), the HeHealth.ai team leveraged an existing tool
to screen for sexually transmitted diseases to develop a digital screening test
for symptomatic Mpox through AI approaches. Prior to the global outbreak of
Mpox, the team developed a smartphone app, where app users can use their own
smartphone cameras to take pictures of their own penises to screen for
symptomatic STD. The AI model was initially developed using 5000 cases and use
a modified convolutional neural network to output prediction scores across
visually diagnosable penis pathologies including Syphilis, Herpes Simplex
Virus, and Human Papilloma Virus. From June 2022 to October 2022, a total of
about 22,000 users downloaded the HeHealth app, and about 21,000 images have
been analyzed using HeHealth AI technology. We then engaged in formative
research, stakeholder engagement, rapid consolidation images, a validation
study, and implementation of the tool from July 2022. From July 2022 to October
2022, a total of 1000 Mpox related images had been used to train the Mpox
symptom checker tool. Our digital symptom checker tool showed accuracy of 87%
to rule in Mpox and 90% to rule out symptomatic Mpox. Several hurdles
identified included issues of data privacy and security for app users, initial
lack of data to train the AI tool, and the potential generalizability of input
data. We offer several suggestions to help others get started on similar
projects in emergency situations, including engaging a wide range of
stakeholders, having a multidisciplinary team, prioritizing pragmatism, as well
as the concept that big data in fact is made up of small data.
