Royal Philips’ https://www.philips.com $15.4 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation https://www.gatesfoundation.org will help front line healthcare workers identify potential problems in pregnancies at an early stage.
The project aims to significantly reduce the number of women who die as a result of pregnancy which is currently around 830 women every day worldwide, while reducing fetal mortality and morbidity help develop an AI-based application suite to improve obstetric care in low and middle income countries. help front-line healthcare workers to identify potential problems in pregnancies at an early stage.
The project plans to develop an application suite that will be deployed on the Handheld Ultrasound Diagnostic Ultrasound Platform offered by Philips Lumify, which is currently in widespread use in community-based mother and child-care worldwide programs.
For example, one program in Kenya educates midwives on how to deliver ultrasound-based antenatal pregnancy screening in village clinics, while receiving telehealth support from radiologists at a distance.
Lumify can help front-line midwives with training and ultrasound experience to make a confident diagnosis. For example, AI-enabled applications have the potential to provide assistance on how to acquire the right images and also assist with the interpretation of the images.
Joseph Frassica, Head of Philips Research Americas, and CMO Philips North America reports, “The effort to use AI to help deliver high quality pre-natal care to the vast number of women in the world who can’t easily access it is a perfect example of how Philips believes AI should be used to empower healthcare professionals to help them deliver faster and more efficient care to help improve patient outcomes.”