Jacaranda to roll out AI-driven initiatives to improve healthcare systems

Jacaranda Health is set to roll out  Artificial intelligence (AI-driven) initiatives to support women through their pregnancy journeys.

The Kenyan-based non-profit organization that aims to improve the quality of care and outcomes for mothers and babies in the public health system said it has culminated a six-month Google.org Fellowship program aimed at transforming the potential of Generative AI to support underserved mothers and babies across the country.

According to the facility, between April and September this year, seven Google.org technical experts joined their Nairobi-based team to improve the personalisation and scale potential of Jacaranda’s digital health service, PROMPTS.

Deployed within public health systems, the platform uses GenAI to empower new and expecting mothers via SMS to own their healthcare journeys and seek and connect with the best care.

Jacaranda’s Director of Technology Jay Patel said the collaboration has helped to transform the personalisation of how PROMPTS AI interacts with mothers at scale including personalising responses around a user’s unique clinical and demographic profile, and enhancing the accuracy of Jacaranda’s Swahili-speaking Large Language Model to rapidly respond to mothers at scale.

He said the fellowship follows a recent $1.4m grant from Google.org to help Jacaranda advance the field of generative AI, ensuring every mother accesses the right information and support during and after pregnancy.

Patel said Jacaranda will be rolling out these personalization features on PROMPTS over the coming months.

Maternal mortality rates in Kenya remain at an alarming 355 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to the 2022 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey.

This figure is over five times higher than the Sustainable Development Goals target of 70 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births by 2030.

In a previous interview, Patel told The Standard that the Fellowship aimed at transforming the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) for low-resourced communities across Sub-Saharan Africa.

“In this regard, six Google technical experts have been selected for the six-month program, which offers the chance to apply practical skills in research, machine learning, and software engineering, amongst others, to solve AI challenges in the ‘real world,” said Patel.

He said between April and October, the six Fellows will work alongside Jacaranda’s teams to improve the accuracy, efficiency, and scale potential of Jacaranda’s technology to serve mothers across the country as it seeks to expand into new African countries.

This includes testing how to leverage AI and large, anonymised datasets to offer personalized support for high-risk mothers and babies, and designing frameworks to manage biases related to gender and economics in Large Language Models.

The partnership also includes building the infrastructure to rapidly adapt PROMPTS to new contexts, and helping other implementers ‘plug and play’ the AI models in other sectors and use cases.

He said Jacaranda’s digital health navigator, PROMPTS, currently uses AI to engage and provide personalised support to new and expecting mothers across the country via SMS.

Agnes Gathaiya, Google's Country Director for East Africa said Jacaranda, with support from the Fellows, aims to push the boundaries of what language models can achieve, ensuring they are more accurate, fair, inclusive and scalable across different languages and contexts.

"Providing mothers with the support they need during pregnancy is a powerful example of how AI can be used to help more people at a wider scale," she said.

Gathaiya said Google is proud to have its employees help Jacaranda develop new technical solutions to drive their mission.

Makueni Governor Mutula Kilonzo Junior as the Postpartum Hemorrhage Champion for Makueni County, understands the challenges in serving the community.

“Our county has a wide coverage of 8,300 km2 and we have significantly high mobile phone penetration. Our strength lies in leveraging this mobile technology to tackle these maternal health issues, and I fully support the adoption of AI to help us advance our healthcare support,”  said the governor.