Advancing Maternal Care Through Intelligent Support

Every two minutes, a woman dies from preventable complications related to pregnancy and childbirth, with over 90% of these deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries. According to the latest WHO report, this places a heavy burden on emerging health systems. The most common causes include severe postpartum hemorrhage, unsafe abortions leading to infections and bleeding, and pre-eclampsia.

Despite growing numbers of engaged midwives and healthcare workers, significant disparities in healthcare access persist—especially in rural, understaffed, and poorly equipped facilities. In these settings, healthcare workers often must improvise during emergencies, frequently resulting in suboptimal or adverse outcomes. Current training programs rely on costly, time-limited initiatives by external experts, which often fail to reach the most remote regions affected by these complications.

SafeBirth reimagines maternal care for such challenging environments. Leveraging advances in digital technology, smart trained algorithm patterns, and expanding mobile networks, SafeBirth offers a digital companion tool for midwives and frontline health workers. The system aims to adapt to local language, context, and user experience, delivering guideline-based answers in real time.

The solution is designed to serve as an on-call emergency companion, aiming to include integrated triage tools to assess severity. Its Smart Library is intended to enable midwives to ask questions and receive instant, evidence-based guidance in their local language at the point of care. Micro-trainings—fictional cases based on real encounters—are planned to reinforce critical skills while promoting respectful maternity care. The goal is to strengthen frontline workers’ knowledge, skills, and confidence to manage obstetric emergencies in a scalable, sustainable way.

Co-developed in Kenya with local midwives and gynecologists, the first SafeBirth prototype will focus on the immediate postpartum period, providing emergency support for preventing and managing postpartum hemorrhage—the leading cause of maternal death. The Smart Library and training features already offer broader guideline content, with plans to expand Action Mode to other obstetric complications. Pilot implementation is underway in rural health facilities across Western Kenyan counties.

Looking ahead, SafeBirth aims to evolve into a next-generation platform for women’s and neonatal health—key areas in low-resource settings. By enabling universal access to context-adapted expert advice and guideline-based recommendations, SafeBirth strives to make maternal care safer even in the most resource-limited settings.

The team includes an obstetrician and global health expert from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, and a Kenyan gynecologist focused on improving maternity care in Africa, overseeing 35 health facilities.