What does it take to win €5 million to build open-source AI for global health?

In this episode, I sit down with David Shaikh — founder of Sherwood Sciences — to unpack how he secured major European funding to build an AI-powered app designed to help frontline health workers diagnose neglected tropical skin diseases across Sub-Saharan Africa.

We go deep into:

• Why the hardest part of AI isn’t the model — it’s the data

• Building the largest skin NTD dataset ever collected

• Bias in medical AI and why skin tone matters

• Why this project is fully open-source

• What it really means to build an “impact startup”

• Why raising VC isn’t always the right move

• Entrepreneurship, rejection, delusion, and betting on yourself

This isn’t about AI replacing doctors.

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