Post by SOFIAA Health

Why “Humans in the Loop” Matters - Even in Journalism Founder & CEO of SOFIAA Health, Dr Jacqueline Koay was honoured to be invited to the Talk Journalism session at The Conduit London during India Week. It was a reminder of why humans in the loop matter more than ever. In health, in AI, and crucially in journalism, the push for efficiency and bottom‑line optimisation has quietly reduced the number of people on the ground. Fewer reporters in communities means fewer authentic stories. And fewer authentic stories means narratives shaped by distance, not lived experience. That gap affects how societies understand women, migrants, health inequities - and ultimately how policy is made. For SOFIAA Health, women from the Indian subcontinent are a core demographic. Their experiences in the UK - navigating menopause, stigma, digital exclusion, and healthcare barriers - are often invisible in mainstream narratives. Being at Talk Journalism created a two‑way flow of information: we could share the realities of the diaspora here, and listen to the perspectives shaping discourse in India. This is why SOFIAA advocates for humans in the CENTRE of loop across every system we build. AI can scale information, but only humans can ground it in truth and humanity. Journalism can automate workflows, but only humans can witness reality. Authentic information is not a luxury. It is the foundation of collective understanding - and we lose it the moment we remove the human from the story. As such, SOFIAA Health staff typically spends a day a week on the ground in the community we build our models and systems for, and we are very proud of that.