How AI is shaping maternal healthcare

A pilot project in Uganda is mobilising AI software to power ultrasound imaging to not only scan unborn babies but to also encourage women to attend health services earlier in their pregnancies to try and reduce stillbirths and complications.

The AI-based ScanNav FetalCheck software, made by Intelligent UltraSound will allow the accurate dating of pregnancies without the need of a specialist sonographer, as the software has been trained on a database of millions of images to recognise a pregnancy’s gestation.

This technology has the potential to be game-changing, particularly in places such as Uganda which tend to have very few trained specialists to carry out scans, and where equipment is concentrated in urban hospitals that are often inaccessible to women in rural areas. Thus, the ability of midwives and nurses to mobilise the AI to assess how far along a woman is in her pregnancy will enable them to detect any abnormalities and complications earlier than at present, potentially reducing the risks of stillbirths and maternal mortality.

What’s more the scan can be carried out by nurses and midwives thanks to the tech allowing them to simply swipe an ultrasound probe over a woman’s abdomen with the programme providing the data. The tech can also be teamed with portable devices, making it much easier to care for women at home.

AI is also being used in another project in Kenya, Ghana and South Africa and is aimed at assessing how aspirin can prevent pre-eclampsia. The study compares the effects of two different drug doses among women at high risk of developing pre-eclampsia.

The challenge for the researchers is getting the AI to provide an accurate reading of the baby’s gestational age, as preeclampsia risks change as pregnancy progresses and for aspirin’s prophylactic effect to truly have an impact, it needs to be given early. 

Whilst these developments are encouraging, there are concerns that the use of AI within developing countries could be viewed as offering a lesser service to women within these countries. A concern that Dr Aris Papageorghiou, co-founder of Intelligent Ultrasound is fully aware of and is seeking to address. “The right thing to do is create capacity in those settings, create the right equipment, have training, have everything that we have in high-income countries. But the reality is that has just not happened, so I think an interim solution- and it may be just an interim solution- is a good one.”