Intelligent Computerized Assistant for prenatal care

We will improve and validate a computerized assistant for community health workers, recording prenatal encounters, assessing risk and suggesting actions. 

Maternal and neonatal mortality in developing countries, are still above millennium United Nations Goals. Main causes of maternal deaths are hemorrhage, sepsis and hypertension. Most complications and deaths are related to poor quality of care during pregnancy and childbirth. Current methods for prenatal risk identification are paper-based and depends highly on providers’ memory. Regardless of multiple efforts, early identification of prenatal risks and subsequent management is still challenging.

We will develop and validate an intelligent computerized assistant for community health workers (CHW), which will operate alongside a web-based information system called HADA that integrates the strategy proposed by Pan-American Health Organization(PAHO) and its Latin-American Center for Perinatology, Women and Reproductive Health (CLAP). HADA stands for “toolset for antenatal assistance and diagnosis” or “Herramientas para la Asistencia y el Diagnóstico Antenatal” in spanish, and it provides capabilities to record prenatal encounters, while also connected with a computational engine (knowledge-driven), helping to identify obstetric risk and generate recommendations for lab test and medications. In addition, HADA enables telemedicine asynchronous encounters when required based on the capacity of data interchange by electronic medical record (EMR) with a specialized center.

Our intelligent computerized assistant (ICA) will allow and enhance community health workers (CHW) capabilities providing just-in time feedback, patient-centered recommendations for scheduling further visits, additional studies, and referrals to specialized care, taking advantages of the already tested functions of HADA. ICA will run in mobile devices without need of active connectivity. Records generated by ICA will be transmitted to a centralized electronic health record once connectivity is available. Teleconsultation will be possible when connectivity allows it.

HADA has already been on 6 months’ pilot trial with a small rural hospital testing the web-based platform and a business model.   We hope the ICA development and validation will provide information and new services that could lead to build a sustainable business model.

CHW are often the sole contact with health services for vulnerable populations in Low-Middle income countries. Enhancing CHWs capabilities in data collection, patient follow-up, risk identification, promptly referrals and teleconsultation. This translates in a broader coverage and better care opportunity. We expect that this type of intervention impacts positively in reducing maternal and perinatal deaths and pregnancy complications related with diabetes, hemorrhage, sepsis and hypertension in high vulnerable population.

We had already been working on HADA’s clinical functionality for some time, with the ICA development for CHW, we are looking to expand its functionality through mobile devices. 

Current methods for prenatal risk identification are paper-based and depends highly on providers’ memory. With a mobile assistant there won’t be any need to relay on provider’s memory, plus data will be safely store. In addition, CHW will receive insight in how to respond to particular cases. 

In 12 months we expect to have a solid business model with the proper information to start designing a deployment with the proper funding. 

In three to five years we vision a fully develop HADA service model, already being used by some rural hospitals in collaboration with the health insurance companies. With this implementation we expect to start enhancing prenatal care with telemedicine tools,  helping  pregnancy risk assessment and treatment with a proper care.

In a first step, conversations will be carry out with the proper health insurance companies. Clinica Universitaria Bolivariana is our current partner who is willing to start supporting this project once it have solid foundation and a proper business model. Since several insurance companies already works with the Clinic, that’s our way in to start reaching new customers once we had enough information and proper result. 

Currently out product is not for sale, we are still improving it. But It has been tested it with a rural hospital with excellent feedback. Our current mobile app is in beta production and we haven’t deploy it yet. We still want to improve it with more funding. 

Taking into account the Clinic’s stadistics, we expect our solution to be  serving with at least 8000 pregnancy woman’s in conjunction with at least one rural hospital. 

We had a solid background in software development for clinical applications. In our team we include a software engineer with more than 10 years of experience in software development, 2 biomedical engineers with expertise in technology and innovation management, providing insight in how technology can be used in hospitals according to the law and medical requirements. And lastly we had the leverage of having a medical doctor with a Phd in clinical informatics, providing its knowledge from the engineer and medical view. 

We are still working on the revenue model. With the validation we expect to have enough insight to answer this question. 

We are looking for funding and potential partners that could help us with our research. Reading and learning about Solve, we think our interest are aligned. Their experience with this kind of project might just be what we need to end our product and business model. And start fully implementing with hospitals. 

Before start reaching customers with need to had solid foundation and a proper business model. Solves would provide support as we are acquiring insight in our validation with the pilot. With this support we expect to get exposure in global and social media, but more importantly with any other investors.