Every day, around the world, an estimated 830 women die from pregnancy or childbirth related causes, most in low-income countries. An additional 7000 newborn babies die each day. Many of these deaths could have been prevented.
The presence of a skilled birth attendant—doctor, nurse, or midwife—at birth is important to prevent and manage obstetric complications.
Supportive care from birth companions can also be helpful to women by bringing support, monitoring, and care to a woman's home throughout pregnancy, labour, and post partum.
Imagine if a digital toolkit could be given to pregnant women that combines the ability to individually support, monitor, and inform them, but does it remotely using sensors and apps. It could also incorporate artificial intelligence algorithms to identify patterns of high-risk complications before they occur and could potentially prevent them.
read the whole piece at https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)32294-3/fulltext
There are many digital toolkits which are already in use in low income countries, and many more which exist but are not widely adopted yet. Such toolkits are primarily used for quick diagnosis and helping decide the next course of action. Like the one we at Plus91 deployed along with our friends at Instrats called FLEM. While such tools are plenty, they have yet to be widely used due to the prohibitive cost, lack of awareness and (funnily) red tape and bureaucracy within the funding agencies.