Government
Infectious disease response with Agentic AI
Business challenge and opportunity
When it comes to public sector’s infectious disease response, the integration of government and public healthcare has the potential to save millions of lives and billions of dollars.
However, public-health emergencies like H1N1, Measles, and COVID-19 have highlighted the lack of speed and flexibility in government policies and the need for real-time decision-making based on reliable real-world data. The key barriers to change are the legacy processes, systems and organizational structures that leave agencies struggling to manage today’s challenges with yesterday’s tools.
While 63% of government respondents in a 2025 survey agree that AI can improve public services, and 22% report improved insights from its use, actual deployment levels remain low, at just 26%.1
As a result, health experts typically manually sift through reports from multiple organizations, then send out physical teams to check on potential disease outbreaks. By the time decision-makers are confident enough to take action, the disease may already have spread through the population.
The emergence of Agentic AI promises to be a game-changer in responding to public health emergencies. By enabling governments to monitor a vast set of signals, detect early indicators and intelligently respond with targeted remediation, Agentic AI can help contain health crises and keep citizens safe.
Technical challenges
With Agentic AI, governments can use real-world data and intelligent policies to respond confidently and automatically to emerging public health crises. However, the technical transformation can be challenging:
Existing government systems may be siloed and contain inaccurate or poorly governed data. Legacy infrastructure must be brought up to date to enable AI readiness.
The highest possible levels of data security must be guaranteed to protect the health information of individuals without hindering inter-agency collaboration.
Citizen-facing AI must keep humans in the loop so answers to business registration questions are explainable and transparent to gain and keep the trust of both civil servants and the wider population.
Autonomous, AI-driven policies must be designed to be fair and impartial with adherence to business guidelines, serving all citizens equitably in all scenarios without bias.
A lack of internal skills is a barrier to AI adoption. The 2025 Kyndryl People Readiness Report reveals that while 95% of organizations are using AI, 71% of leaders believe their workforces are unprepared to leverage its full potential and 32% say their organization doesn’t understand the future skills needed.2
Democratic governance demands accountability with clearly defined agent workflows so AI-assisted government decisions are accurate and auditable.
Our solution
Using the Kyndryl Agentic AI Framework, Kyndryl helps government health agencies detect and collaborate about the spread of infectious diseases.
Detect outbreaks of contagious diseases by collating real-time data from private and public health systems, and social media posts about symptoms.
Fit-for-purpose infrastructure modernization for AI to accommodate on-premises requirements, cloud-first stances or a hybrid approach, taking into account stringent security measures needed for processing health data.
Optimize public health response plans and interventions by balancing real-time insight with the organizational experience embedded in policies and workflows. Allocate medical supplies and personnel based on advanced modeling and correlation.
Speed delivery of critical information to officials and citizens with timely communications based on clear, explainable AI insights with automated responses, maintaining expert human-in-the-loop oversight to preserve trust and transparency.
Enable humans to improve process and policy continuously by observing operational policies in action and in detail, driven by accurate understanding.
Keep sensitive data localized and sovereign, while governing agentic behaviors and workflows with policy-as-code.
Benefits you could achieve
Protect citizens and reduce the economic impact of disease outbreaks with Agentic AI. Transforming real-time data into intelligent decisions can enable:
- Rapid detection of health emergencies: Agents process vast quantities of structured and unstructured data to spot the earliest indicators of an outbreak.
- Accelerated public health decision-making: Combining real-time insight with existing policies, agents propose explainable plans almost instantly to human decision-makers.
- Better use of highly skilled human expertise: With AI agents identifying disease clusters, human experts are freed from the time, effort and risk of traveling to potential outbreaks.
- Enhanced outcomes: Health agencies can make and communicate clear decisions faster, slowing or stopping contagion.
One Kyndryl customer3 has significantly reduced the time taken to identify measles clusters. The AI solution resulted in faster control, targeted messages that keep public trust intact – all done with health policies and privacy rules.
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Why Kyndryl?
Kyndryl helps governments turn AI ambition into enterprise-scale impact.
With decades of mission-critical operations experience, we bring deep expertise in designing, building, and managing AI across complex IT estates.
The Kyndryl Agentic AI Framework enables businesses to move beyond isolated pilots to integrated, intelligent systems. It combines secure, scalable agent orchestration with real-time observability and governance, powered by Kyndryl Bridge.
Through Kyndryl Consult, we align AI strategy with business outcomes. Kyndryl Vital provides proven user-centered design and rapid prototyping. And our trusted delivery experts ensure frictionless integration and help with reskilling and upskilling to build the foundation for success at scale.
We apply a forward-engineering approach — using insights from existing systems to design and deploy future-ready AI agents and architectures that are adaptive, resilient, and scalable. Our method is grounded in open ecosystems, data sovereignty and transparent decision-making.
With Kyndryl, AI becomes a core capability — not just a tool — driving productivity, innovation and growth.
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1 Source: EYG no. 004937-25Gbl (- note, registration required)
2 Source: Kyndryl People Readiness Report 2025
3 This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by Kyndryl at any time without notice. Not all offerings are available in every country in which Kyndryl operates. The performance data and client examples cited are presented for illustrative purposes only. Actual performance results may vary depending on specific configurations and operating conditions. Kyndryl products and services are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided.