Royal Philips has announced a $15.4 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop an artificial intelligence-based application suite that improves the quality and accessibility of obstetric care in low- and middle-income countries.

The grant will fund efforts to develop the application suite on Lumify, Philips' handheld ultrasound machine currently in widespread use in community-based mother-and-child care programs around the world. AI technology has the potential to help frontline healthcare workers identify high-risk pregnancies that can be clinically managed to prevent adverse birth outcomes and provide automated image acquisition or image interpretation for a comprehensive set of obstetrics measurements to provide a better estimate of gestational age.

"Philips is a pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare, with many of its AI-based solutions already FDA approved," said Joseph Frassica, head of Philips Research Americas and chief medical officer for Philips North America. "This effort to use AI to help deliver high-quality prenatal care to the vast number of women in the world who cannot easily access it is a perfect example of what we believe AI should be used for — empowering healthcare professionals to help them deliver faster and more efficient care to help improve patient outcomes."

Source: PND