"Never be afraid of what people think or that you can’t achieve something. You can! (...) because as girls, we are amazing, and if we try, we can do anything." - Team Equalife

EIT Health Rising Stars

Young Innovators: Three Teenage Girls Invent AI Tool to Combat Misdiagnosis in Women's Health

Interview with Majda Mandić , Staša Aleksić, and Teodora Radičev

We were lucky enough to catch up with Majda Mandić, Staša Aleksić and Teodora Radičev from Team Equalife to find out about their recent success as part of the Girls Go Circular programme. These 16/17-year-old girls are wise beyond their years and are showing all of us that you are never too young to start making big changes in the world. The girls are passionate, driven and ambitious…and who’d have thought they even manage to make time for walking, baking and disco dancing! Team Equalife is a very welcome addition to our community.  

All three of us go to the same school, with a focus on natural sciences, physics and maths. We are also going to science camp together!

Majda: I also go to music school where I play the piano. In the future I would love to be an architect or dive into astrophysics. 

Teodora: My ambition for the future is to go into the medical field, either medicine or biomedical engineering. I’m really looking forward to that.

Staša: My favourite subjects are biology and chemistry and one day I would like to work in something relating to biomedicine and biomedical engineering. I’m also a member of European Youth Parliament which could play an interesting part in the future.  

The challenge! Usually, STEM subjects are male dominated and there are stereotypes about the right people who are suited to these kinds of studies. Often women and girls are made to feel they don’t belong, or they are not smart enough, and so it’s really cool for us to challenge that and be a part of the STEM world. We enjoy solving problems! 

There is a professor and mentor at our school called Edi Daruši who runs a group aimed at kids who want to do more than just school. He is always sharing opportunities for projects and competitions, and he shared a link for Girls Go Circular and told us that he needed three girls who were interested. The three of us liked it and thought it looked super interesting, so we told him we would like to form a team. We started to meet as a group, together with our amazing mentor and Equalife was born! 

Equalife aims to prevent the misdiagnosis of women by using AI to analyse a comprehensive range of symptoms, accounting for gender differences. This approach improves the likelihood of early and accurate detection, thereby enhancing healthcare outcomes for women and reducing the biases that lead to misdiagnosis. Differences between male and female symptoms can lead to misdiagnoses which could have fatal consequences. Women remain underrepresented in research and health management, and we want to tackle this issue.

The few days spent in Budapest for the Women and Girls in STEM Forum will always remain in our hearts. From the strong friendships to the amazing mentorship and courses, we truly enjoyed the experience. We feel much more confident in the field now and are very grateful for the opportunity to attend the forum and to get the credits needed to make our app available for everyone. 



The first thing we want to do is educate people our age on the issue of symptom differences between men and women. We will start with schools and introduce Equalife to students to teach them about this issue. Then we hope to develop the app and take it step by step from there.

As a prize we received $6,000 Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud Credits, sponsored by the Work in Health Foundation as part of their partnership with AWS. AWS offers services like computing power, machine learning, and development tools. We will get to use the AWS credits to progress Equalife and gain hands-on experience with advanced technologies. We are excited to take this step forward and stay together as a team to positively impact society.



The moment that we finished our project and submitted it. We all remember how happy we felt at that exact moment! It was also pretty amazing when we discovered that we received 1,472 of the total 7,778 votes!  

Never be afraid of what people think or that you can’t achieve something. You can! You only need to take one step forward and then things will start to happen. You just need to be sure of yourself and know that you can do it – because as girls, we are amazing, and if we try, we can do anything.  



All of it is a really big step for us! From such a small start in such a small country, now we have access to all these opportunities. We cannot wait to explore the community and connect with people that can support us, help us keep achieving and make us feel like what we are doing is working. It is so great to be able to participate in things like this interview that give us the visibility across the community to help bring attention to what Equalife does. 



Majda: I like to read and listen to music; I also play cello and piano. I love to draw and enjoy the arts. I also enjoy watching movies and taking nice walks around the city or in the mountains.  

Staša: I am actually a professional disco dancer (with a world championship coming up!) so I am usually training. Otherwise, I spend my time with family and friends.   

Teodora: I love to draw and to paint. I go on long walks with my friends, and I often spend time with my older brother baking and cooking.  



The path that we chose isn’t easy, but not every path is, and everyone should keep fighting for themselves to get there eventually. Fight for the things you want to do and the things you love because it’s important to. In years to come, you don’t want to look back and think why didn’t I do this or that.  

This great opportunity has opened our eyes, we have met so many ambitious, impressive girls that think like we do. It is so great to see that young women are interested in innovating and helping improve the world we live in. Innovating in this field is so important, and we need to keep inspiring young girls to get involved. 

Follow Equalife’s instagram account to stay updated with their journey!

Follow Equalife: Instagram

About Girls Go Circular

Girls Go Circular is an EIT Community initiative that equips girls aged 14-19 across Europe with digital, entrepreneurial, and green skills through an online learning programme available in 24 languages.

Find out more: Girls Go Cirular

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