El Salvador Adds New Tools in National Health App to Track and Treat Chronic Conditions

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced the start of the second phase of Dr. SV, a public health application developed with Google Cloud that uses artificial intelligence based on the Gemini model to detect, diagnose and monitor patients with chronic diseases. The mobile app now targets conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and kidney problems, offering free 24-hour medical consultations via video calls, digital clinical records and personalized treatment follow-up for all Salvadorans.

Bukele made the announcement during a national broadcast from Casa Presidencial in San Salvador, where he met with Google Cloud officials and medical experts. “We are creating the best health system in the world,” he said. The second phase builds on the app’s initial rollout last November. It introduces algorithms that identify risk factors through digital questionnaires, generate automatic lab orders and send reminders for medications and checkups. If patients miss appointments three times, a human staff member follows up by phone.

Guy Nae, Google Cloud’s director for the public sector in Latin America, explained that the system evolves to serve chronic patients. “Doctor SV evolves to attend chronic patients. Someone who has hypertension, diabetes, kidney problems,” Nae said. Specialist Edgardo Von Euw, who joined the meeting, noted that about three million Salvadorans live with at least one chronic condition. Many remain undiagnosed: only six out of ten people with hypertension know they have it, and the rate is even lower for kidney disease.

The app works like this: users create a single digital health record, describe symptoms with AI assistance, receive an initial assessment, and get scheduled for virtual or in-person visits with doctors. At the end of a consultation, patients receive QR codes for free medicines at affiliated pharmacies and lab tests. More than 400 pharmacies and laboratories now participate.

Doctors remain in charge of final decisions. Human physicians handle consultations with AI support running in parallel, Bukele clarified. “The 30,000 appointments a day are doctors, humans, attending the patient with the support of artificial intelligence,” he said. The system currently processes about 18,000 calls daily and has capacity for 30,000.

Since its debut, Dr. SV has signed up 1.1 million users and handled 1.5 million appointments. User satisfaction stands at 97 percent, and diagnostic accuracy in AI-supported trials has reached 93 percent, officials reported.

The project forms part of a broader seven-year agreement with Google that includes at least $500 million for digital government services. The government has run clinical trials under the supervision of El Salvador’s ethics committee to measure the AI’s effect on diagnostic precision.

Bukele said the platform will expand further. “At some point we will be treating cancer, doing surgeries,” he added. The second phase arrives as the country works to reach the millions of people who have chronic conditions but lack regular care. Officials say the app’s goal is simple: make sure no Salvadoran with a chronic disease goes undiagnosed or untreated.

Dr. SV remains available for download on major app stores and operates through the public health network led by Hospital Nacional El Salvador.