The integration of AI-powered tools into telehealth and telemedicine is rapidly transforming maternal care in sub-Saharan Africa. Innovative technologies coupled with their timely use enable risk assessment and prenatal guidance to be provided remotely to promote maternal care in low-resource settings.
In the last five years, due to the rapid development and deployment of AI tools, a certain reduction in the prevention of maternal mortality and an improvement in diagnostic accuracy has been achieved.
Developers have mainly focused on poor nations since over 90% of the 700 pregnant women who die each day live in emerging economies. Through remote consultations and automatic risk scoring calculations, these AI-powered platforms are enhancing maternal health outcomes in Africa.
This DevelopmentAid article offers readers insight into the 10 main AI-based tools that are improving maternal care in sub-Saharan Africa.
How AI-based platforms have become the drivers of change
Integrating AI into telemedicine and telehealth is rapidly transforming maternal care in developing nations. AI machine learning algorithms, chatbots, and virtual monitoring systems are enhancing remote diagnosis, patient monitoring, and the delivery of virtual care. In DevelopmentAid Dialogues, Professor Krishnan Ganapathy, a Neurosurgeon at the Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R. Medical University, explains that AI-powered virtual health consultations and remote monitoring can help to evaluate patients’ conditions and deliver care that is on a par with the outcomes achieved by physical visits.
“AI integrated into various virtual health services enables doctors to remotely diagnose, read and monitor patients using data-driven tools,” he clarified, adding that AI algorithms can evaluate medical images such as X-Rays virtually, helping those physicians who only have an average knowledge of radiology.
Furthermore, AI supports remote symptom checkers that allow patients to enter their symptoms using a mobile app and receive an instant preliminary assessment. According to Dr. Jan Niclas Strickling, a German interventional cardiologist, AI platforms allow symptoms to be checked remotely and the level of risk to be assessed by patients prior to seeking a consultation.
“AI is changing telemedicine by facilitating remote symptom checkers and the automatic calculation of risk scores, thus directing patients to the right level of care before visiting a clinician”, commented Dr. Strickling in a DevelopmentAid Dialogues podcast.
The gaps in maternal healthcare management in Africa
In determining exactly which issues AI platforms needed to address, developers considered the following factors:
🔹 The motherhood information gap in Africa
By checking patients’ inquiries and behavior data, the developers designed AI-driven tools tailored to answer frequently asked questions. The information gained from these interactions enabled NGOs to develop AI tools, such as Rockefeller’s PROMPTS, that enable mothers to access answers to questions pertaining to pregnancy and postpartum through SMS.
🔹 The increasing maternal mortality rate
The need to slow the surging maternal mortality that is the result of late diagnosis and intervention in the sub-Saharan region of Africa formed the basis for AI development. According to the WHO, in 2023, sub-Saharan Africa accounted for over 182,000 of the global maternal deaths, confirming the need for AI-related systems.
🔹 Shortage of healthcare professionals
The developers identified a shortage of skilled medical workers in rural Africa, which significantly reduces access to certain health services such as ultrasound imaging. This information served as the basis for launching the ScanNav app described later in this article.
🔹 Available field data and clinical data sets
Real-world data enables IT professionals to create systems that understand patients’ symptoms and improve maternal care. For instance, determining the feasibility of Ethiopia’s AI-POCUS (described later in the article) involved collecting data from over 700 pregnant women, which confirmed that users of the AI tool are 4.9 times more likely to achieve the WHO-recommended number of antenatal visits compared to the control group who did not use the tool.
Top-10 AI-powered platforms and programs improving maternal care in sub-Saharan Africa
🔹 DawaMom initiative, Zambia
DawaMom provides remote maternal and antenatal care support to mothers located in rural areas. The tool offers personalized maternal health advice in various languages through chatbots. The AI-powered tool is also accompanied by a kit containing a blood pressure monitor, a urinalysis test kit, and a TORCH infection test panel.
🔹 AI-enabled Point-Of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS)
This enables non-specialist clinicians to screen for gestational age, fetal viability, and presentation, and multiple gestations. An Ethiopian study determining the impact of AI-POCUS revealed that its users achieves the WHO-recommended number of antenatal visits, which enables timely referrals in resource-limited settings.
🔹 ScanNav FetalCheck
This tool is changing prenatal care in remote areas of Africa by facilitating pregnancy scans without the need for trained sonographers. The software enables midwives and nurses to carry out a scan by swiping the abdomen with an ultrasound probe, which provides instant data and facilitates home care.
🔹 MomConnect
This platform provides free and stage-based information from early pregnancy to a child’s second birthday. Since its inception in 2014 up until 2024, over 5 million mothers using public antenatal services had registered on the platform, with at least 95% coming from public health institutions.
🔹 AskNivi
This AI chatbot, available in Kenya, Nigeria, and India, provides personalized guidance on issues of contraception and reproductive health. In Kenya, AskNivi has partnered with Ipas, leading to an approximately 4% increase in the number of medication abortions offered through Ipas’s interventions.
🔹 Baby-Checker Programme, Pan-Africa
Created by Delft Imaging, this AI tool assesses obstetric ultrasound scans, enabling the identification of high-risk pregnancies. The scans are carried out using a handheld ultrasound device and can be done by any community health worker, even those with no previous experience. In low and middle-income countries, over 15,000 scans have been performed using Baby-Checker, with there being at least 2,400 scanners in 15 nations.
🔹 PROmoting Mothers in Pregnancy and Postpartum Through SMS (PROMPTS)
Designed by Jacaranda Health, this tool provides advice and enables the early discovery of pregnancy-related risks. PROMPTS sends mothers SMS messages and provides AI-enabled helpdesk services to offer rapid answers to pregnancy-related questions. Through the platform, more than 2 million mothers have received lifesaving data, and approximately 1,200 health institutions have installed the tool.
🔹 Butterfly Network Gestation AI tool
This tool, available in Kenya and South Africa, is empowering health specialists to instantly calculate gestational age without the need for image interpretation. The technology is improving the early detection of risky pregnancies in settings with limited accessibility to ultrasound services. Through the Butterfly Network Gestation tool, the number of Kenyan women seeking antenatal visits before six months of pregnancy has registered an increase, and over 90% of patients have reported complete satisfaction with the care.
🔹 Helpmum Chat Bot
The Helpmum digital platform provides individualized advice on maternal healthcare and vaccination schedules. In its 2023 impact report, the developers of the app reported that over 130,000 nursing mothers had registered with it and it had helped to avert at least 20,000 maternal deaths through its e-Learning resources.
🔹 Ask-A- Question (AAQ)
This plug-in app, developed by IDinsight, facilitates AI-powered responses to patients’ questions, changing maternal support into a two-way digital communication. AAQ is available in South Africa and, since its deployment, has answered approximately 880,000 maternal questions, achieving 83% validity in FAQ matching since its inception.
Final thoughts
AI-based platforms are improving maternal care in developing nations by enabling the early detection of high-risk pregnancies and allowing prompt diagnoses. The integration of AI systems into healthcare now makes remote consultations, risk scoring, and the monitoring of pregnant women in remote rural areas possible.
